🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <1992Jul28.145249.16542@esds.mdc.com>, by bonney@esds.mdc.com (Greg Bonney):
> I don't see why these discussions so often
> digress to meaningless sarcasm and insults.

It did digress to sarcasm (not intended as meaningless) because your
post appeared to ridicule my arguments by taking them to extremes for
which they were not intended.  Especially if considered in terms of
the subject line.  I'm sorry if I got your intentions wrong.

>And even if I had very little knowledge of Pascal, who are you to tell
>people not to participate in these discussions?!

If somebody writes, as you did,

>>> For instance, why don't mathematicians write out "a squared plus b squared
>>> equals c squared"?

in a discussion about Pascal and C, I do assume he has no knowledge of
either Pascal or C at all, or he is getting something wrong.

>>1. Do you think it's done this way in Pascal?  Then leave this discussion
>>and read something about it before you argue.  

Note the qualifying question attached - obviously the description does
not fit you.  I don't mind people with "very little knowledge" posting
(I fit that label in as many areas as anybody else), but if someone
argues about a language he doesn't know *anything* about, then, yes, I
do, as participant in that discussion, consider myself entitled to ask
him to keep out of it, or at least abstain from posting inappropriate
answers to my articles.

>I never said anything about Pascal and neither did you
>(except in the subject heading).

What are subjects for?  I realize that apart from the subject, the
in-text references to Pascal may have been non-obvious, especially
since I referred to some other languages (such as Ada) as bad
examples.  Sorry.

> (By the way, if you think music has a
> "limited vocabulary", go to your local library and check out a music
> dictionary!)

This was your own example for utility of "special characters",
therefore I was talking about the vocabulary of musical notation, not
about the meta-vocabulary used in natural language when discussing or
describing music.  There are no special characters in the text when
somebody writes about a "sonata in C minor" - the special symbols are
in the score itself, not on the meta-level.

-- 
Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert!mst@relay.eu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst