From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: A simple solution to "Upcoming loss of usability ..." Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2015 20:58:44 +0000 Message-ID: <20150625205844.GA6883@acm.fritz.box> References: <87egkzg7gb.fsf@gmail.com> <558C2E25.10303@cs.ucla.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1435265916 17516 80.91.229.3 (25 Jun 2015 20:58:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2015 20:58:36 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Oleh Krehel , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Paul Eggert Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jun 25 22:58:29 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@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 1Z8EE8-0000cD-F0 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 25 Jun 2015 22:58:28 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:57439 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z8EE7-0000Hk-Ax for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 25 Jun 2015 16:58:27 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:41245) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z8EDt-0000Hd-7w for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 25 Jun 2015 16:58:14 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z8EDo-0006Fw-V5 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 25 Jun 2015 16:58:13 -0400 Original-Received: from mail.muc.de ([193.149.48.3]:11608) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z8EDo-0006Ff-La for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 25 Jun 2015 16:58:08 -0400 Original-Received: (qmail 54350 invoked by uid 3782); 25 Jun 2015 20:58:06 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (p548A4FA0.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [84.138.79.160]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Thu, 25 Jun 2015 22:58:05 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 7347 invoked by uid 1000); 25 Jun 2015 20:58:44 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <558C2E25.10303@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-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: FreeBSD 9.x X-Received-From: 193.149.48.3 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:187533 Archived-At: Hello, Paul. On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 09:36:53AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote: > Oleh Krehel wrote: > > (font-lock-add-keywords > > 'emacs-lisp-mode > > '(("\\(`\\)\\([a-zA-Z-0-9]+\\)\\('\\)" > The proposed approach would mishandle many cases where the things being quoted > are not typical Lisp identifiers. E.g.: > "Press ‘h’ for complete help; press ‘?’ repeatedly for a summary" > "Make ‘funcall/apply’ form to map SOURCE-ARGLIST to TARGET-ARGLIST...." > "... Example: ‘(ad-map-arglists '(a &rest args) '(w x y z))’ will return ..." I think there will be several of these cases rather than many. > Also, the proposed approach won't easily generalize to diagnostics, which often > quote non-identifiers like ‘%s’. There's also a UI problem: it would cause > action-at-a-distance, because typing an apostrophe in one place in the buffer > would visually alter a part of the line many characters away. > (Action-at-a-distance is not a fatal objection, but it is better to avoid it > when possible.) It's not a problem at all. Font lock does it all the time. For example, just type in "save-excursion" a letter at a time. Only on typing the "n" does the whole symbol get fontified. > Most of the advantages you mention for the proposed approach are also advantages > of the approach in master. With the current approach, the Emacs sources don't > need to be changed, .... they've already been massively changed. > .... quotes are just as easy to input (in Electric Quote mode), .... This is an unpleasant workaround. It violates "what you type is what you get". > .... terminal and copy-pasting work, and quotes are markup. Which is true, for certain values of "terminal" and "copy-pasting". > The main advantage of the proposed approach over the current master is that the > source code often can still contain grave accent and apostrophe unmodified, even > though people reading and editing the source code will see curved quotes. To my > mind this is more a recipe for confusion than anything else -- at least, I > wouldn't want to inflict it on Emacs newcomers. The main advantage is that non-working characters, the curly quotes, would not take a central role in Emacs Lisp source code, together with all the workarounds of questionable taste that they necessitate. It is solely these non-working characters which I take exception to, and I think the same is true of several others objecting to these changes. How about considering these other approaches, in which non-working characters would not be proliferated through the strings in our source code? -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).