Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 9ce1d38: Use curved quotes in core elisp diagnostics

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Paul.

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 02:40:17PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > Nobody having to type "Ó" on a Spanish keyboard layout
> > would have any trouble.

> Spanish keyboards typically do not have "Ó", so your restrictive definition 
> of 
> "working" would say that "Ó" is trouble even on a Spanish keyboard.

I think you know full well what I mean by "working character", and that
my definition wasn't meant to be water tight in the way you're now
trying to pick holes in.  Spanish keyboards DO have "Ó", for any
sensible value of "have".

> > On the contrary, holding down <AltGr> while typing on the numeric
> > keypad, successively 2, 0, 1, 8 or 2, 0, 1, 9 is laborious indeed, even
> > assuming that these codes have been retained in memory.  For that is
> > what a user with a normal keyboard layout, outside of Emacs, will be
> > forced to do.

> The criterion cannot be that any text editor in any configuration should be 
> able 
> to edit Emacs source code with no trouble.  That hasn't ever been true.

I think it pretty much has been, certainly for all but a few special
files, up until the last few days.

> All that's needed is that people be able to edit their source code in
> Emacs, with occasional use by other text editors, when PROPERLY
> CONFIGURED.  All MODERN text editors can HANDLE UTF-8 text files when
> PROPERLY CONFIGURED, so this is not a problem.  I just now checked
> 'less' and 'vim', for example, and they WORK FINE with UTF-8 curved
> quotes even on the Linux console if it's PROPERLY CONFIGURED.

Paul, that paragraph is pretty much content free, without having some
good idea of what that vague bits (I've capitalised them) mean.

I think you're agreeing with me that to work with curly quotes using
these tools, you're going to be having to enter their hex codes, as
described above.  In the file versions without the curlies, this simply
didn't arise.  Putting the curly quotes into our source files have made
them more difficult to work with.  This is a Bad Thing.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).