[swift-evolution] [Meta] Let's talk TouchBar + Unicode

[Jeremy Pereira]

> On 29 Oct 2016, at 03:22, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
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> Given the adage here that code is more frequently read than written, it is unreasonable to require someone to master both "form union" and the union operator when one of these will do. While you and I are comfortable with set algebra notation, not everyone who uses Swift will be, and currently they *do not have to be* in order to be perfectly proficient at Swift. It does not sway me that you can now more easily type a character on a potential future device. It matters to me that someone not familiar with set algebra would have a hard time even looking up what such a non-ASCII character is when he or she first encounters it in, say, a textbook.

Somebody not familiar with set algebra is not going to understand what “formUnion” means either. Either way they are going to have to look it up. Google returns the link in the Apple documentation as the top hit for formUnion, and it returns the Wikipedia page for set unions for ∪, so not a terrible disaster for discoverability. However …

> 
> Now, to be clear, a third-party Swift library should be free to adopt any language or character set, and we should make the tooling as robust and convenient as possible for that use case, but the choice for Swift standard library APIs--themselves deliberately restricted in scope--should be the minimum required for clearly expressing what these APIs are. A person should not need to buy a special keyboard or device, or know how to work the option/alt key, in order to write the less-than-or-equal-to operator. OTOH, there's nothing wrong with a third-party project to decide that its API will be Sanskrit-only and require proficiency in the associated script for use.

This I agree with 100%: the functions and operators of the standard library have to be typed in by everybody who programs in Swift. Not everybody has a MacBookPro with a touch bar (in fact, not anybody just yet, except for a lucky few). Not everybody wants to program with an iPad. Some people even like to program in Swift with text editors that aren’t Xcode. I expect there are programmers (especially on Linux) whose preferred editor is vi or even Emacs. For that reason, the Swift Standard Library has to be fairly lowest common denominator in terms of characters used.

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