On 03/12/2020 07:07, Troberg wrote: >> I once had a teacher who said that it would have been much easier for new >> users if the \ (or /, depending on OS) It's interesting, or maybe not, what we use the / for and how in normal sort of tryping when you can't find the right code, how to write for example five and five sixteenths. Never mind the new fangled \ . When I was a lad, many of these symbols were unknown. It's odd, how in most every human endeavour, we make things more complicated, instead of more simple.

Ray West <raywest@raywest.com> wrote: >It's interesting, or maybe not, what we use the / for and how in normal >sort of typing when you can't find the right code, how to write for >example five and five sixteenths. Never mind the new fangled \ . When I >was a lad, many of these symbols were unknown. It's odd, how in most >every human endeavour, we make things more complicated, instead of more >simple. They were known/used, just not easily accessible, since printing math books (termed as "penalty copy") required special sets of mathematical symbols and/or matrices for a Monotype hot metal casting machine. It's been a very, very long while (centuries) since mathematic problems were written out as essentially textual descriptions --- the symbols since developed are far more expressive (I did the typesetting of the English translation of Thomas Harriot's https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16808003-thomas-harriot-s-artis-analyticae-praxis under contract) --- folks who want to make use of them when programming can consider systems such as Literate Programming: http://literateprogramming.com/ which allow mixing formulae (written using (La)TeX which is a quite close mapping to how a mathematician might write out a formulae) and program code. Eventually I'll re-work: http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb40-2/tb125adams-3d.pdf as a literate program. William

But Mathematicians are a subset of humanity, mathematically speaking! The \ was undefined in EBCDIC encoding. Sir Clive Marles Sinclair, who invented the first scientific (and pocket) calculator went for reverse polish notation, which although being easier to implement, therefore mathematically purer? was pretty much useless for many folk. Over on the freecad forum, someone had posted about being able to write openscad code. I had a look. I responded as below, the essence of which was copied from the original at https://github.com/supermerill/FreePySCAD. > Not sure why it's openscad, with a different syntax. > > > Braces are replaced with parenthesis > > The ; (semicolons) are replaced with , (commas) and is required to > place it after ) if no other ) are directly after that to respect the > python syntax. > > Modifiers like translate, rotate must not be unattached. Use the > parenthesis or a dot: > > OpenSCAD: difference(){ translate([1,1,0]) cube(2); rotate([0,0,45]) > cube(2); } > FreePySCAD: difference()( translate([1,1,0]).cube(2), > rotate([0,0,45])(cube(2)),) After fighting with myself having to shove a ; at the end of lines, I now have to use ,'s? or should that be - After fighting with myself having to shove a ';' at the end of lines, I now have to use a ' ,'? Poet's day today, (but having left paid employment many years ago, every day is poet's day Best wishes, Ray On 04/12/2020 15:15, William F. Adams via Discuss wrote: > Ray West <raywest@raywest.com> wrote: > > >It's interesting, or maybe not, what we use the / for and how in normal > >sort of typing when you can't find the right code, how to write for > >example five and five sixteenths. Never mind the new fangled \ . When I > >was a lad, many of these symbols were unknown. It's odd, how in most > >every human endeavour, we make things more complicated, instead of more > >simple. > > They were known/used, just not easily accessible, since printing math > books (termed as "penalty copy") required special sets of mathematical > symbols and/or matrices for a Monotype hot metal casting machine. > > It's been a very, very long while (centuries) since mathematic > problems were written out as essentially textual descriptions --- the > symbols since developed are far more expressive (I did the typesetting > of the English translation of Thomas > Harriot's https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16808003-thomas-harriot-s-artis-analyticae-praxis > under contract) --- folks who want to make use of them when > programming can consider systems such as Literate Programming: > > http://literateprogramming.com/ > > which allow mixing formulae (written using (La)TeX which is a quite > close mapping to how a mathematician might write out a formulae) and > program code. > > Eventually I'll re-work: > > http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb40-2/tb125adams-3d.pdf > > as a literate program. > > William > > _______________________________________________ > OpenSCAD mailing list > Discuss@lists.openscad.org > http://lists.openscad.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.openscad.org