Re: cannot understand Elisp manual node Glyphs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 18:49:09 -0500
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> Specifying faces thru glyph codes is kludgy and perhaps obsolete.  I
> think it calls for a total redesign, perhaps not before Emacs 23.

Agreed.

> It was added at a time when there was no other way to specify faces
> for buffer text.  It doesn't seem very useful to me now.  So maybe we
> should delete it instead of redesigning it.

I think we shouldn't consider deleting it now, for the same reasons we
shouldn't consider redesigning it: we should move aside anything
except bad bugs and remaining copyright problems, anything that might
delay the release for no good reason!

Deleting such a veteran, if kludgy, feature so close to the release
runs a high risk of producing additional bugs, complaints, long
discussions, etc. etc.  Why risk that now?

> What are the purposes for which people want to use it now?

Emacs itself uses that, see dos-unsupported-char-glyph.  (And yes, the
MS-DOS port is still supported in Emacs 22.)  Am I supposed to rewrite
the variable, its doc string, and the associated manual sections, so
close to the release?  To what end??