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From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Subject: Re: Allegro CL 6.0 Trial Edition
Date: 2000/11/03
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* David J. Fiander
| Of course, people who've studied the history of the book (which I
| haven't particularly), will happily point out that capitalization
| (the use of majiscules at the beginning of sentences), punctuation
| (including the use of spaces between words), and even paragraphing
| were all _invented_ to ease the reading process [1].

  Yeah, yeah, whatever.  Please try to get the point, and try to
  control that trigger-itchy posting finger with your special agenda
  physically attached to it.  Please also _try_ to use your reading
  skills to such astonishing endeavors as actually observing that
  nobody is arguing against whitespace or punctutation.  Christ, guys,
  go nuts for all I care, but keep it within _range_ of what is being
  discussed, will you?

  What _I_ observed when I wanted to preserve the case of _words_ was
  that a fairly large number of people went ballistic over this and
  losing their marbles in the process.  Actually being able to deal
  with a single, isolated change to a system they do not understand
  how came to be, was impossible: They react as if the whole system
  was rejected, and spelling and grammar with it, in my cases.  I must
  admit that I found such people tremendously entertaining for a
  while, but watching crazy people go lemming over the far edge of
  reason got old fast.  I imagined a sphinxter so tight it would have
  saved the Kursk crew, setting new records in anal retentive behavior
  and the like, but really, why is it _impossible_ for those who think
  that the entire world order and humanity's last chance rests with
  capitalizing that first letter of a sentence to realize that their
  fears might not be true.

  I am very well aware of the arguments for typography, and I have in
  fact studied it, but that does not mean that I have to agree that
  the information-destroying _print_ habit of losing case information
  for the first word in a sentence is smart for electronic text before
  it goes to print.  Almost everything is improved by case sensitivity
  (such as Common Lisp, to keep this marginally on topic :), and
  search engines that didn't match all kinds of words when you search
  for proper names would be a good thing.  But not as long as the anal
  retentives come crawling out of the woodwork every time they don't
  get the difference between source code for a book (electronic text)
  and published print copy.
  
#:Erik
-- 
  Does anyone remember where I parked Air Force One?
                                   -- George W. Bush