Re: please use ?\u2014 instead of the unicode character inbuff-menu.el

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 2/19/07, Drew Adams <address@hidden> wrote:

> I don't intend to establish a line. Judgement is needed, perhaps
> case by case.

That still doesn't help the user who doesn't know what your decision was.

> What I said, in an earlier mail, was this:

I know. I've said that I know what you were arguing for.

> Good question, and one that I raised in response to Eli's mail.

Excuse me for not reading the threads in the order that would be more
convenient to you ;-)

> Maybe we should say explicitly that all code should be
> downloaded using a Unicode encoding - I don't know.

I'm not sure *we* should do it, in the sense that people who downloads
code from their browser is bound to learn sooner or later that it is a
bad idea to ignore encodings.

> We will have to live with it, until the world (including Emacs
> ;-)) is Unicode through and through.

Not doing anything is a way to "live wit it". Making it easier for the
user to continue to ignore the issue is not helpful, long term.

> Our best recourse, at least in this transitional period, is to
> be aware of the potential gotchas and use our best judgement to
> help users avoid problems. That's all; I don't have a better
> suggestion than that. Maybe someone else does.

I agree. I just don't think the problem of people downloading a wrong
copy of buff-menu.el is really pressing. I'd say most people gets
Emacs in full, either from a source tarball, a binary package or CVS.

> No, the fix for the problem that I reported is to use an escape
> sequence in buff-menu.el.

I was referring, obviously, to the general problem, not the specific
buff-menu.el issue. You say that you weren't talking about the general
problem, so let's leave it at that.

> This sideline discussion (this problem that you are apparently
> struggling with, and that you think I am struggling with)

Oh, I assure you that I'm not struggling with any Emacs problem right
now, other than restlessly waiting for Emacs 22 to be released.

> We can at least do what we can to prevent that problem from
> arising in no-brainer cases such as buff-menu.el.

No comment, as I already said I don't mind this specific case.

> It's just common sense. And replacing two em-dash characters
> with \u2014 is hardly making "extraordinary efforts".

No. Taking the time to discuss a change that should, in an ideal
world, be unnecessary and even ill-advised, and also the time do think
where to draw the line, is an extraordinary ("beyond what is ordinary
or usual", not "highly unusual or exceptional or remarkable") effort.

> It does, however, sometimes seem to take extraordinary efforts
> to get the slightest suggestion across to change something, even
> something trivial, in the Emacs code.

Your (everybody's) trivial is other people's bad idea, sometimes.

> As with all bug reports, it's up to you whether you want to
> consider this a bug and, if so, whether you want to fix it,
> and how.

I bow to others in that collective "you".

            Juanma