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The original was posted on /r/programminglanguages by /u/lassehp on 2025-06-29 20:43:45+00:00.

Original Title: Inspired by the discussion on PL aesthetics, I wrote a small filter that will take Algol 68 code written using MathBold and MathItalic (like the code itself), and produce UPPER-stropped Algol 68 code.

I wrote this filter because I had wanted to do so for a long time, and the recent discussion on the Aesthetics of PL design finally got me to do it.

The linked gist shows the code written using the “book style” of Algol 68, and can be directly compared with the “normal” UPPER stropped version, its output when applied to itself. I also put an image in a comment, of how the text looks in XFCE Mousepad, as an example of using a non-monospaced font.

I had to use Modula-2 back in 1988, and I never liked uppercase keywords. A good boldface font, that is not too much heavier than the regular font just looks a lot better to me, and with italics for local identifiers and regular for identifiers from libraries (and strings, comments etc), I feel this is the most readable way to format source code that is also pleasing for the eye to look at.

Yes, it requires some form of editor or keyboard support to switch the keyboard to the MathBold or MathItalic Unicode blocks for letters, but this is not very difficult really. I use vim, and I am sure more advanced editors have even better ways to do for example autocompletion of keywords, that can also be used to change the characters.

For PL designers, my code could also be useful to play with different mappings. The code also maps “×” and “·” to “*” for example. The code is tiny and trivial, and should be easy to translate to other most other languages.

I doubt I can convince the hardcore traditionalists that characters outside US ASCII should be used in a language (although some seem to enjoy using fonts that will render certain ASCII sequences as something else), but any discussion is welcome.