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On May 12, 12:08*pm, Michael Press <rub...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> In article <l76dnevxxsZJhlHQnZ2dnUVZ_sSdn...@bestweb.net>,
> *Kenneth Brody <kenbr...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> > On 5/12/2011 11:44 AM, David Mathog wrote:
> > [...]
> > > which is not at all the same thing. *Other times the confusion was:
>
> > > if(long_condition)actual_do_something_off_right_si de();
> > > * * looks_like_conditional_but_not_do_something();
> > [...]
>
> > Or worse, and harder to spot;
>
> > * * *for(foo;bar;baz);
> > * * * * *not_part_of_the_for_loop();
>
> Hence for(tom; dick; harry) { }
>

<off topic>
Or if you want to **** off a college professor, do something like the
following...

while(the_pope_is_gay);

</off topic>

On May 12, 11:49*am, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.org> wrote:
> and my own failing visual acuity.

Hear you on that one. Post cataract surgery at a font size small
enough to show enough code to be usable I can barely tell these pairs
apart:

colon,semicolon
period,comma
parenthesis, brace

The editor I use (Nedit) can help with the last case (it has "find
matching") but
nothing short of a temporary "magnify at cursor" would help with the
first two cases, as they are all essentially just dots, and even
coloring them doesn't make it much easier to tell them apart since it
is hard to see the color on a dot. I tried editing with Windows
"Magnifier" running in the background, but it was too annoying having
all that motion in a window which I only rarely needed to consult.

Regards,

David Mathog

On May 13, 10:56*am, David Mathog <dmat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 12, 11:49*am, Keith Thompson <ks...@mib.org> wrote:
>
> > and my own failing visual acuity.
>
> Hear you on that one. *Post cataract surgery at a font size small
> enough to show enough code to be usable I can barely tell these pairs
> apart:
>
> * colon,semicolon
> * period,comma
> * parenthesis, brace
>
> The editor I use (Nedit) can help with the last case (it has "find
> matching") but
> nothing short of a temporary "magnify at cursor" would help with the
> first two cases, as they are all essentially just dots, and even
> coloring them doesn't make it much easier to tell them apart since it
> is hard to see the color on a dot. *I tried editing with Windows
> "Magnifier" running in the background, but it was too annoying having
> all that motion in a window which I only rarely needed to consult.


Have you tried some of the fonts designed to help people with visual
impairments? Most of those do focus on the ordinary letters, but
some, Tiresias and APHont font, for example, do add considerable
emphasis on the distinguishability of some of the punctuation marks
giving you trouble. Those happen to be proportional font, so they're
not ideal for program text, but surely we could come up with fixed
pitch fonts that would help (they might not be all that attractive,
but that's clearly a secondary consideration).