Re: [SMARTY-DEV] Re: smarty-dev Digest 29 Apr 2003 17:01:26 -0000 Issue 123

--- messju mohr <messju@lammfellpuschen.de> wrote: >> no common expectation that all people expect There is never a common expectation across all people :) Still, it is reasonable to expect that a PHP user will expect function names to be case-insensitive. It is a natural expectation considering that that's the way PHP says it is. So how can Smarty support case insensitive function names? Particularly on w2k? There's a gotcha waiting. > a big amount of smarty is for people who are not interested in php or > how it handles this and that, or how it php looks or fells or the > like. there is no need to follow suit of php here. CS is really a lower-level detail that is interesting to programmers. They are typically the ones who go nuts for it. They (we) want to define every aspect of our interfaces, right down to what it means when you start a label with an Upper case letter or not. Smarty provides a framework and as such, should be confident enough that it makes some of these decisions once and for all. The fact that it doesn't doesn't make it more flexible or better. Quite the contrary. Lets be honest, there are many conventions in the API. Also, it is Smarty's responsibility to deal with text within the delimiters and that includes defining what it should look it. Why are there so many code formatters that FORCE naming conventions and coding styles on source code? How come everyone agrees that naming conventions are a good thing (but often ignore them)? Why do project leaders insist on this or that style in shared code-bases? Expectations. Its a contract. People know what's what. I've heard that a bad naming convention that is consistent is better than a good naming convention that no one uses. Isn't there an analogy here for case? Who are we talking about in "People not interested in PHP..." layout designers? I'd bet real doughnuts that your non-techie designer won't understand that {MyFunction} is not the same as {MYFUNCTION} -- the same way I have a hard time understanding the difference between AliceBlue and Azure and when to use which. My understanding is that PHP has case insensitivity just because it is a web-based language intended for use by people used to writing HTML: the very same user space that Smarty targets. Perhaps PHP's choice is less suitable now considering where the language is at. Smarty is far narrower than PHP and hopefully always will be. Narrow choices are a good thing for Smarty. It lets Smarty provide the smarts, even for so-called dumb users (who are usually just innocent people who don't want to read a new manual every week). But if it ain't broke, don't fix it. At least you have the code in your pocket, ready to use if need be. Anyway, I won't bend your ear on this anymore. I'm already sick of defending this ugly issue. xo boots __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com