Re: obscure new display features

[Miles Bader]

On Mar 30, 2005 7:40 AM, Dave Love <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> > I've no idea why non-breaking characters should be displayed like
> >> > this, but U+00AD isn't one -- it's SOFT HYPHEN.
> >
> > I think the same distinction used for NBSP applies:
> 
> Why?  It isn't a no-break character.

The point of similarity is not break-vs-non-break, but that they're
both characters which can be displayed identically to  some more
common character in "display contexts", but which should be
distinguished visually (e.g., with an escape prefix ["\"]) in "editing
contexts".

> > In _editing_
> > contexts, it's useful to display it (1) always,
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > (2) uniquely,
> 
> Does that mean you want to ban homoglyphs?  If so, you're on a loser.

The crucial point is that the way these characters should be displayed
differs depending on the context in which they are displayed -- in a
"display context", like a Gnus *Article* buffer, or a help buffer,
they can be displayed "natively" (e.g. a NBSP as a simple space), but
in an "editing context", e.g. a normal emacs buffer, they should be
displayed in a visually distinct manner.  The reason is that when
editing, it's important that the user not confuse them with other more
common characters.

So far as I know, this is not a distinction that the unicode standard
makes, but it is one that Emacs needs to worry about.

> > and (3) noticeably, all of which are satisfied by treating like
> > other escape characters.
> 
> What does `escape characters' mean?  I don't see how these characters
> could be described any way like that.

I just mean "\".

-Miles
-- 
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
l