Case sensitivity, line labels and the future

C Y <smustudent1@yahoo.com> writes:

> --- Jay Belanger <belanger@truman.edu> wrote:
>> I don't understand the point.  Why not just make the contributed
>> stuff lower-case, why is case sensitivity an issue?
>> Unless making the conversion from case-insensitive to case-sensitive
>> is a large time sink, what is the problem with case sensitivity?
>
> I think that's the point - it might be a significant time sink if the
> code is very case sensitive.  

Okay, that's a reason I can understand.  (Not that me understanding
it is important ...)

>> What problems does it cause?  (I usually type foo, but occasionally
>> I like to type Foo?)
>
> Basically if we want to make use of case sensitive code but our
> standard is to have all contributed code be lower case, we have to
> rewrite it to use only lower case.

Wouldn't a filter that takes the files and makes them all lower case
work? 

> For example, if someone writes a file that defines a function Diff
> which does something different from diff, it's a problem when we
> convert to lower case.  

But that's creating new files, not rewriting old ones.  And why would
Diff be converted to lower case?

> The way things are shaping up, I think we will be either a)
> autoconvering source files to lower case code and fixing what breaks or

Since the current situation is case insensitive, what could break?
There can't be any situation where Diff and diff act differently.
At any rate, this would go to the trouble of making Maxima case
sensitive.  But given a case sensitive and case insensitive Maxima,
I've seen several reasons to choose the former.  Is there any reason
to choose the latter? 

> > > Martin RUBEY <rubey@labri.fr> writes:
...
> As soon as we have case-sensitive packages, it will be impossible to use
> them in case-INsensitive maxima. 

So the concern here is backwards compatibility?

> So as long as maxima is possibly case-insensitive (as it is now or
> as it might be in the future by choice), such a package might be
> broken. (because it might contain two different variables Foo and
> foo, which would be the same in case-insensitive maxima)

If Maxima were made case sensitive, why would it revert to case
insensitivity?  The only reason that I've seen to remain case
insensitive is the trouble of making it case sensitive in the first
place.

(To be clear, I'm not being purposefully dense.  I'm that way
naturally.) 

Jay