principles

(and how to achieve them with the new syntax)

1. keep it minimal

   • no attributes
   • no globals
   • no 'computed' expression syntax (use a built-in macro)
   • no 'this' expression
   • no local entities (only custom macros)
   • no imports (for now)
   • no implicit default variants (for now)

2. keep it simple

   • don't reinvent the wheel
   • no surprises
   • consistent
   • keep special syntax to minimum

3. translations should be hard to break

   • good error recovery
   • sigils for args
   • sigils for variants
   • sigils for traits
   • separate strings to be translated (surrounded with quotes) from strings used programmatically (:keywords)

4. naming is up to the developer and the localizer

   • allow for more glyphs in identifiers
   • namespaces are convention