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

[Thomas Morley]

2017-09-12 9:25 GMT+02:00 David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
> 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.

Indeed !!

> 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.

Understood.

Cheers,
  Harm