Subject: Re: RFC: Lisp/Scheme with less parentheses through Python-like significant indentation? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 2000/08/17 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3175491579516609@naggum.net> [ Sorry about the delayed response -- this thread has swamped my news time. ] * Paul Fernhout <pdfernhout@kurtz-fernhout.com> | I understand people have many reasons why they may not want to use | indentation in Lisp, but I still haven't heard of any technical | objections to why it could not work which have included a specific | example. Technical? You want the paren-less (orphaned? :) form to satisfy humans and some vocal humans object that it doesn't satisfy them. When does this become technical? There probably cannot be technical reasons why some representation won't work. This is also paren-free and has no ambiguity at all: #1 defun example #11 #12 #11 foo &optional #111 #111 bar 1 #12 + foo bar But would you want to write code like this? How about being forced to unless you can give _technical_ reasons why this won't work? (I submit that there _are_ no technical reasons to reject this, only good reasons for humans to reject it.) If you don't care to write code like that, and don't want to struggle to give any technical reasons for it, please accept that the people you're proposing your paren-less Lisp to do not want to write code in your syntax and object strongly to your implicit claim that unless they can defend their position on technical grounds, they should. #:Erik -- If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.