On May 28, 12:33 ¨Βν¬ ΓαμεΓμαυσεΌφιλλ®®®ΐηναιμ®γονχςοτεΊ
> > I think the best way to assuage their
> > doubts would be for any change to have absolutely no impact on
> > existing code, with a clear distinction between old-style syntax and
> > new-style indentation-aware syntax.
>
> You're making an argument based on other people's opinions, for which
> you have no evidence. I rather doubt that the naysayers on this thread
> will be much convinced by such a fine point.

Okay then, remove "assuage their doubts" and replace it with "pull the
teeth of their arguments." It's hard to argue against something that's
completely optional. You can say that syntactic indentation is worse
than 'end' until you're blue in the face, but how do you say that
having choices is worse than not having them?

> > Besides, I kind of like the look of the colon as a block-start
> > delimiter. It emphasizes the separation between the loop or
> > conditional or method call and the block it controls.
>
> Ah, now we get down to it. It's really all just a matter of taste.

No, seriously, this was an aside. I do prefer the look of having the
colon, but far more important than aesthetics is the fact that using a
colon (or other delimiter) would preserve compatibility with blocks
that have random indentation.

> Would a semicolon make you just as happy? ;) It looks almost the same
> and can be used where you want a colon already:
>
> while foo;
>  ¨Βας

I wouldn't say it'd make me "just as happy"... I suppose I'd prefer it
to having no delimiter at all (and therefore not supporting blocks
that do not have canonical indentation) but the colon makes more sense
to me. Usually punctuation marks in programming languages at least try
to have some relation to their plain human-language meaning (foo?
foo!) and the colon means 'here comes a bunch of stuff related to the
thing before the colon'.

> Can you give an example of when you would want indentation to be
> ignored that's not overly weird looking to you?

I suppose I could but it seems tangential. Grep the Ruby standard
library and you'll find hundreds of places which would break if
indentation were enforced, there are your examples. And besides, I'm
all in favor of choice. Even if freeform indentation is "overly weird
looking" to me, it may not be for someone else, who should have the
option of using it should he wish.