Re: Spell Checking for Non European Languages, and for Conlangs

En réponse à Philippe Caquant :


>Thanx for information. I saw that there are things
>about Ruby on the Web, so I'll try to have a look at
>it. But my real dream would be to forget the language
>and concentrate on the problems !!!
When you check the Ruby sites, you'll see that it's exactly what people 
using Ruby claim it allows them to do: forget the language and concentrate 
on the problems ;))) . Ruby is said (by users of the language, not its 
creator) to follow the Principle of Least Surprise. It means that someone 
who has acquired the basics of the Ruby language (main methods, OO 
structure, the few primitives it has as well as some design principles) 
will learn the rest without ever be surprised or see things that contradict 
their gut feeling about how it "should" work in Ruby. In my experience, 
their impression is correct: learning to use Ruby is first full of nice 
surprises, and then the surprises stop. You just think: "I knew it would 
work like that!" :)) . It never brings bad surprises (unlike Fortran for 
instance, which doesn't cease to surprise me, not often in positive ways 
;)) ). Ruby is a language that tries not to get in the way of the 
developper :)) .

>  A three-month
>learning period to write 12 lines of code, and then
>forget the language to try something else doesn't seem
>very rational to me.
Indeed, but it's unfortunately often necessary. Language fitness is a very 
personal thing, and you often won't know if it fits you unless you try it 
first.


>I find it very exasperating for ex that every
>language-maker has to write such a simple statement as
>: IF... THEN... ELSE... in his own manner. What does
>it help ? If I remember, in Perl you have to write
>"elsif", end note "else if" or "elseif" or whatever.
>What is this good ? Saving 2 keystrokes ? How much
>time is lost in counterpart by people coming from
>other environments ? This all should have been
>normalized long ago for EVERY language. I said.
Hehe, Ruby answers this in a nice way: want to use "elsif": it works! "else 
if" works too. Hell, I even think "elseif" works! ;))) . Want to put "then" 
after "if"? it works. Don't want to put it? it works too! ;))) Ruby took 
the Perl philosophy of "there's more than one way to do it" ;) down to its 
main syntax.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.