Re: Equation display styles and context-sensitive rendering

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

address@hidden (Jeff Kingston) writes:

> Given that the elements of environments don't behave anything
> like other Lout symbols, I think you would be better off not
> declaring them as symbols, but just having 
>
>     @SetEnv key { string } value { object } object

In doing so, one ends up re-implementing the symbol lookup mechanism.
More importantly, as a consequence, such "environment variables" would
not obey regular access control and scoping rules.

For instance, there could be an accidental name clash where two packages
end up using an "environment variable" named "X" but for different
purposes (one could also imagine malicious uses of this property).

Conversely, an approach similar to the one I suggested (i.e.,
"first-class environment variables") avoids these issues: a package
cannot access the "environment variables" used by another package,
unless that other package explicitly exports them, just like regular
variables.

Besides, esthetically, address@hidden' looks non-functional, in contrast with
address@hidden', etc.  (I guess I'm very much influenced by Scheme's way of
solving it but the argument about scoping and access control seems
relevant to me.)

Thanks,
Ludovic.