Re: improving Janek's \dynamic function (for combo dynamics)

[David Kastrup]

Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:

> 2017-09-10 14:43 GMT+02:00 David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
>
>> More like a nightmare.  Some markup expression with some \etc somewhere
>> in the middle?  How many arguments is it supposed to stand for?  And
>> which markup command is it supposed to complete?  And when is the
>> definition supposed to be complete when \etc is not necessarily the last
>> part?
>>
>> And here you put \etc in a position where it could replace an arbitrary
>> number of markups, but my-concat magically does not get a markup list as
>> its argument but a single markup?
>>
>> This is solidly "do what I mean, not what I say" realm, and computers
>> have nothing to go by but what you say.
>
>
> Yeah, I do understand the programmers point of view, at least enough
> to get the nightmare.
> But from a user's perspective is "do what I mean, not what I say"
> still sort of a dream. ;)

Hey, it's not like I am bad at making naïve expectations work.  If you
take a look at the recently committed issue 5181, it's probably good for
making a good amount of stuff "just work" as expected that previously
led to a lot of Scheme programming and list help.  It's such a biggie
that I haven't felt up to doing regtests, documentation of the feature,
and undocumentation of having to work around its non-existence.  Well,
I started with the undocumentation in issue 5192 but there is a whole
lot else to do.

But your \etc example?  Too many inconsistencies.  One would to need to
break it down into indivual elements, see how any of them can be cast
into a framework, throw out those that don't fit and come up with
something that covers enough ground to make some sense.  And then you'll
still have people asking why their attempts of hand-waving at an
interface designed for hand-waving does not work and explain to them
just what hand angles they can expect to use for what result.

Yes, it's likely that one can extend \etc usage in some manner.  But we
won't likely read the stage where people jot down just anything
including \etc and have it do what they expect.

-- 
David Kastrup