From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.bugs Subject: bug#20707: [PROPOSED PATCH] Use curved quoting in C-generated errors Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2015 13:34:23 +0000 Message-ID: <20150609133423.GA3735@acm.fritz.box> References: <556DCE36.9070505@cs.ucla.edu> <20150602170724.GA2567@acm.fritz.box> <20150602204423.GA2619@acm.fritz.box> <55707236.6060605@cs.ucla.edu> <20150606155445.GE3418@acm.fritz.box> <557337CD.60706@cs.ucla.edu> <20150606205023.GA3862@acm.fritz.box> <55738BA9.7050104@cs.ucla.edu> <20150608171804.GA3184@acm.fritz.box> <55768D82.3040509@cs.ucla.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1433856942 10703 80.91.229.3 (9 Jun 2015 13:35:42 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2015 13:35:42 +0000 (UTC) Cc: 20707@debbugs.gnu.org To: Paul Eggert Original-X-From: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jun 09 15:35:30 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Z2JgU-0008Qq-MD for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 09 Jun 2015 15:35:18 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:35180 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z2JgT-00082g-Rq for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 09 Jun 2015 09:35:17 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:49619) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z2JgK-00080t-G1 for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 09 Jun 2015 09:35:14 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z2JgH-000629-80 for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 09 Jun 2015 09:35:08 -0400 Original-Received: from debbugs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.43]:35874) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z2JgH-000615-5o for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 09 Jun 2015 09:35:05 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-debbugs by debbugs.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1Z2JgG-0004i5-3Q for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Tue, 09 Jun 2015 09:35:04 -0400 X-Loop: help-debbugs@gnu.org Resent-From: Alan Mackenzie Original-Sender: "Debbugs-submit" Resent-CC: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Resent-Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2015 13:35:03 +0000 Resent-Message-ID: Resent-Sender: help-debbugs@gnu.org X-GNU-PR-Message: followup 20707 X-GNU-PR-Package: emacs X-GNU-PR-Keywords: patch Original-Received: via spool by 20707-submit@debbugs.gnu.org id=B20707.143385684518021 (code B ref 20707); Tue, 09 Jun 2015 13:35:03 +0000 Original-Received: (at 20707) by debbugs.gnu.org; 9 Jun 2015 13:34:05 +0000 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:45849 helo=debbugs.gnu.org) by debbugs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1Z2JfH-0004ga-JG for submit@debbugs.gnu.org; Tue, 09 Jun 2015 09:34:04 -0400 Original-Received: from mail.muc.de ([193.149.48.3]:37397) by debbugs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1Z2Jf9-0004gD-7u for 20707@debbugs.gnu.org; Tue, 09 Jun 2015 09:33:56 -0400 Original-Received: (qmail 3486 invoked by uid 3782); 9 Jun 2015 13:33:53 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (p548A4C34.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [84.138.76.52]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Tue, 09 Jun 2015 15:33:52 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 4316 invoked by uid 1000); 9 Jun 2015 13:34:23 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <55768D82.3040509@cs.ucla.edu> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-BeenThere: debbugs-submit@debbugs.gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 140.186.70.43 X-BeenThere: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org List-Id: "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.bugs:103765 Archived-At: Hello, Paul. On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 11:53:54PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote: > Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > The topic was specifically "message output". > OK. > > we don't control Info output > Actually, we do control it, and can easily tell makeinfo to output straight > ASCII quotes. Can we? I've had a look at the online Texinfo-5 manual, but couldn't find anything specifically about ASCII quotes. The only thing remotely relevant I saw was the --enable-encoding option, which I think is more about the encoding in the .texi file than in the output .info. > Although that would have made sense in 1995, it doesn't make sense now, > as makeinfo's default behavior of outputting curved quotes works better > for ordinary usage today. Paul, this is vague hand-waving, and is simply untrue. The only use case where curly quotes might be said to "work" better is in passive viewing of an Info file, and that only in a subset of our display environments. For every other thing you might want to do with an Info file, ASCII quotes are superior. The abstract principle at work here is that ASCII quotes are @dfn{working} characters, whereas the curly quotes are merely @dfn{display} characters. The working characters are on keyboards (without awkward workarounds) and they can be displayed "anywhere". The display characters are great when sent to the printer, or in PDF files, though. > > you could fix that by fixing your fonts > No, that would disagree with common usage for these characters. I meant change the appearance of your 0x27 apostrophe so that its appearance as a quote mark doesn't jar your aesthetic sensibilities. This has nothing to do with its usage, surely? > Almost everybody uses the current standard in this area, and it > wouldn't be reasonable to require users to switch to long-obsolete font > styles just to see decent output. What standard? What other projects do is their thing, and shouldn't be affecting Emacs. Emacs is different from most of them, in that its users manipulate its outputs. Anyhow, who said that the traditional form of quoting is not decent? > > That still displays double curly quotes as inverse question marks, though. > This is not a problem if the topic is specifically "message output", as only > single quotes are being proposed for message output. That being said, most > likely your problem is because you told Emacs you were in a UTF-8 locale. You > can try setting LC_ALL=en_GB.iso885915 or something like that before starting Emacs. > But I'm not sure I would do that. If I understand the rest of your message > correctly, your environment already displays curved single quotes as nicely > curved single quotes. Yes, the single curly quotes are "hard linked" to the ASCII single quotes in the font. That isn't acceptable for me - they should have distinct glyphs if they're going to be there at all. > The main problem for message output is that you don't like the exact > appearance of curved single quotes in your font and would prefer a > different appearance and don't like any of the other fonts I've > suggested and would rather fire up a font editor to get an appearance > you like. Although that's all fine of course, this appears to be > mainly an issue of font style preference, which means it's an issue > that does not block the proposed change. This is not the case; the discussion of individual fonts, and my personal setup, and so on were just a distraction from the main points. I've described in some detail many of the things I don't like about the proposed change, and few of them are to do with the minutiae of the available fonts. The change is not intended to be optional, I think, because that would be difficult to implement. So, it's going to be a pain in the posterior for most, if not all, users of Emacs on terminals, and the benefit for users in GUI environments seems marginal. I am against this change being made. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).