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bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors
From: |
Paul Eggert |
Subject: |
bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors |
Date: |
Wed, 10 Jun 2015 09:20:26 -0700 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.7.0 |
Alan Mackenzie wrote:
You want to
promote difficult-to-type and problematic-to-display characters to the
status of standard "working characters".
The problems aren't that serious. Display problems are limited to obsolete
environments that hardly anybody uses because they're so awful, and even there
we have workarounds. And typing problems aren't a big deal in my Emacs
environment: for left and right single quotes I normally type a single
keystroke, without any control or shift or meta keys. (This is because I use
Electric Quote mode.) Other typing environments are also available that work
nearly as well (using Alt-[ and Alt-] for the two characters, if your Alt key
works).
I'm not expecting everyone to use these keyboard methods right away. There will
be a transition period, and perhaps other, better methods of dealing this will
emerge. However, there should be no obstacle to people who do want to use those
methods.
I have a feeling you're intending to argue for making the use of curly
quotes in our Lisp files standard.
Yes, of course. It should be normal to type quotes as themselves in doc
strings. It's basic WYSIWYG.
Anyway, here's another idea for making curly quotes in lisp code
optional: an escaped 0x27 or 0x60 in a string should be translated by the
reader to the appropriate ASCII or curly quote, depending on the user's
configuration. So a doc string might contain this:
\`foo-bar\'
I considered doing that, but there were problems. First, it would make doc
strings harder to read. For example, this:
"Setting this attribute will also set the \`:family\',
\`:foundry\', \`:width\', \`:height\', \`:weight\', and
\`:slant\' attributes."
is harder to read than this:
"Setting this attribute will also set the ‘:family’, ‘:foundry’,
‘:width’, ‘:height’, ‘:weight’, and ‘:slant’ attributes."
Second, the new escapes would cause mental overload with similar
already-existing uses (e.g., ?\`, "\\`"). Third, and most serious, is that the
new escapes would mean that string literals are not constants but are instead
expressions whose values depend on runtime context, and this would affect
everything: how the byte-compiler works, for example.
To avoid the most serious problem, I considered a simpler idea: have the Lisp
reader treat \` and \' as curved single quotes in strings. However, this still
has the basic problem of being hard to read. It is needless work to add a
hard-to-read and nearly-ubiquitous feature merely to cater to obsolete
platforms. It's simpler to use quote characters to represent themselves.
Again, I think the only justification for the change you've given is that
you personally don't like the look
It's not just me personally. The rest of the world has moved on. At this point
when outsiders look at Emacs they see mysterious and inappropriate and
off-putting quoting. And this sort of thing has been happening for a while.
See, for example:
http://www.trilithium.com/johan/2005/07/quotation-marks/
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, (continued)
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/06
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Alan Mackenzie, 2015/06/06
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/06
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Alan Mackenzie, 2015/06/08
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/09
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Alan Mackenzie, 2015/06/09
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/09
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Alan Mackenzie, 2015/06/09
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/09
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Alan Mackenzie, 2015/06/10
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors,
Paul Eggert <=
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Dmitry Gutov, 2015/06/10
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/10
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Alan Mackenzie, 2015/06/10
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/10
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Alan Mackenzie, 2015/06/11
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/11
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Alan Mackenzie, 2015/06/12
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/12
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Alan Mackenzie, 2015/06/13
- bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors, Paul Eggert, 2015/06/13