Re: Emacs 26.1 release branch created

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, Paul.

On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 11:26:55 -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > Is there anything standing in the way of me merging this branch into
> > emacs-26 now?

> Although the code part of that branch looks good, the documentation patch still 
> has significant unaddressed problems, first mentioned here:

> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2017-09/msg00775.html

> with followup discussion ongoing as of today. Your latest proposal
> continues to recommend an awkward text-quoting-style programming
> technique ....

Ruhbish!  It suggests the natural and economical way, the way used
countless times for many, many purposes throughout Emacs.

> used nowhere in Emacs, ....

There are historical reasons for that, which I doubt you want to go into
at the moment.  Those reasons no longer hold.

> .... while refusing to mention the technique that is actually used.

It's used once, in cc-engine.el (and that might well change).  It's a
bizarre and poor technique, unnecessarily putting a single conversion
through `format'-like operations twice.

I think that a typical hacker, with awareness of both techniques, is
going to chose binding text-quoting-style rather than the double format
alternative.

> (Also, it's too wordy.) This needs to be fixed, and I trust that the
> ongoing discussion will help do that.

When you introduce something like curly quotes to Emacs, there is bound
to be a lot of documentation needed about it.  I don't think your way of
dealing with this, namely fragmenting the documentation of three
functions, is the right way.

But I suggest that neither of us is in a position to give a definitive
unbiassed judgment of the point.  Let's wait for more level-headed
people to express their viewpoint.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).