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

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Richard Stallman writes:

 > Turnbull has misrepresented my views again:

Dr. Stallman, as far as I can tell, I did not misrepresent you.  I
simply summarized the import of your own words, as quoted below.

 >> You're telling *me*?  Eli, it's the opponents like RMS, Alan, and
 >> Drew who are dismissing all possible benefits without even trying
 >> the change for long enough to confirm they can't adjust to the
 >> cost.
 > 
 > Please read my own messages to see what I have said about this at
 > various times during this discussion.

For example, you wrote this, quoted in full except for the NSA-baiting
header and .signature:

 > Your arguments are heated but not coherent.  Denigrating a significant
 > class of users with the term "lobby" does not make them less important
 > or less worthy of respect.  You can't refute a practical argument
 > by targeting an imaginary prejudice.
 > 
 > It is not pertinent what fraction of all computer users use non-ASCII
 > characters daily.  That doesn't tell us what fraction of Emacs users
 > use non-ASCII characters -- but that is not pertinent either.  You
 > implicitly presume that they are in favor of this change, but that is
 > not true.  Some Emacs users that use non-ASCII characters daily _in
 > Emacs_ will be inconvenienced by this change.
 > 
 > The situation is simple: using curly quotes in doc strings would be a
 > substantial inconvenience for many users _for no practical benefit_.
 > 
 > If it provided a practical benefit for other users, we would need to
 > consider how many gain how much (and what roles they have in Emacs
 > development), versus how many lose how much.  But since it doesn't,
 > that question does not arise.

I see nothing there that is inconsistent with the description
"dismissing all possible benefits" (unless you want to quibble about
the difference between "practical" and "possible"), and it's quite
obvious that you oppose the change.  IIRC it transpired that you were
not even using an Emacs in which the change had been applied at the
time you posted that message.  So what was misrepresented by my words
as you quoted them?

By the way, your apparent belief that the discussion of the number of
non-ASCII users was a description of benefits of the change is a
complete misreading.  That was an argument that the cost of learning
input methods is zero, and the cost of using them nearly zero, for a
large number of computer users, though not all.

Also, it is false that I presume that anybody is in favor of this
change who hasn't posted in support of it.  That's my main point, that
none of us know what the majority of developer-users will think of
this change until they try it and tell us.