Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!sharkey!itivax!lokkur!scs
From: scs@lokkur.UUCP (Steve Simmons)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Elm 2.2 miscellany
Summary: Hey!  I have a compromise...
Message-ID: <1331@lokkur.UUCP>
Date: 23 Apr 89 17:24:45 GMT
References: <5191@nis.mn.org> <5192@nis.mn.org> <5006@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> <645@maxim.ERBE.SE> <970@pkmab.se>
Reply-To: scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons)
Organization: Inland Sea Software, Ltd.
Lines: 32


On
	[Deleting your entire mailbox.]
vs
	[Deleting your entire mailbox]

Kristoffer Eriksson's comments about changing brackets to parens points
up a part of the punctuation/no punctuation controversy.  Most folks don't
think of brackets as punctuation marks.  Long time computer folks [like
me] do.  So when computer folks see the brackets and the periods, it's
percieved as double punctuation.  I went and did a real brief survey, and
sure enough brackets with punctuation looked "funny" to the computer folks
but OK to others.

The brackets mean "what's inside here is a message, what's outside isn't."
They are a delimiter, not punctuation.  So why not break the mold of what
us computer folks expect and still retain by punctuation by changing
	  [Deleting your entire mailbox.]
to
	[  Deleting your entire mailbox. ]

A very small change, but suddenly the message looks like what the
developers intended -- a tiny box holding a grammaticly correct
phrase.  It no longer looks like a double-punctuated phrase.  Note
the double-space at front, single at back.

Or you could even go whole hog, drop the brackets, and highlight
the phrase.
-- 
+ Steve Simmons, Inland Sea Software, Ltd.         scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us +
|    9353 Hidden Lake, Dexter, MI. 48130                   313-426-8981    |
+          "When Dexter's on the Internet can Hell be far behind?"         +