Re: Variable names?

[David Kastrup]

Thomas Morley <address@hidden> writes:

> 2012/11/18 Wim van Dommelen <address@hidden>:
>>
>> My question: Is this use of different (utf8) characters supported "by
>> accident", or on purpose? I would welcome this change but not when it
>> can be broken in the future. And if "yes" can someone update the
>> documentation to provide some guideline as what to do and what not to
>> do.... With some examples?
>
> I've not the knowledge to answer your questions definitely.  David
> Kastrup could say much more about it. (And there are several
> discussions about that topic here on the list and on devel.)

At the current point of time, the rule is that "alphabetic" is a-z, A-Z,
and _any_ non-ASCII character.  This is a bit excessive, but short of a
reliable "is a letter" test, this was easiest to implement.

Personally, I stick to ASCII letters.  There is probably a bit of code
around that relies on some non-ASCII characters, so it is not really
clear that a discussion of what to do when one gets a more reliable
criterion for "letter" (possibly with Guilev2) will lead to a particular
result.

There is not likely going to be a technical necessity for changing the
current behavior.

However, diverging from common usage will possibly sometimes confuse
convert-ly and other programs different from LilyPond itself.

-- 
David Kastrup