Re: Upcoming loss of usability of Emacs source files and Emacs.

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

There are two different issues here: a UI issue and a programming issue.
I'm afraid you are mixing them up.

  > Also, quoting with single quotes is easier for most non-experts to read. 

Most non-experts don't read the Emacs source code.  Are you talking
about reading messages and doc strings?

  > Emacs's traditional style of quoting with grave accent and apostrophe is 
  > idiosyncratic and is offputting for many new users;

To new users reading the Emacs source code?  Or is this about what
they see in messages and doc strings?

  >   I have 
  > some interest and experience in this, as my assistants and I introduce 
Emacs to 
  > an average of about one new user per day.

When you introduce Emacs to new users, do you teach them to edit Emacs
Lisp code?  I have nothin against it, but it seems unlikely that they
all advance so far in one day.


There are two different issues here: a UI issue and a programming issue.
The UI issue is about what to display in messages doc strings.
The programming issue is about what to write in the source code.

I'm talking about the source code issue, but the reasons you give
seem to apply to the UI issue.

We've already settled the UI issue, with a feature that will display
the quotes in whatever form the user likes, defaulting based on what
the terminal can display.  That should please everyone.

This makes the source code issue totally independent of the UI issue.

What practical benefit comes from writing curly quotes in doc strings
in Lisp source code?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.