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From: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>
To: Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
Cc: Aurelien Aptel <aaptel@suse.com>
Subject: RE: Quoting t and nil in docstrings (was: [Emacs-diffs] master b952385: Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string")
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2019 06:52:10 -0800 (PST)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <3786817e-806c-46ea-9af8-9bd95b8aad01@default> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <jwvzhr76959.fsf-monnier+emacs@gnu.org>

> >     Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string"
> [...]
> > -This makes the hook buffer-local, and it makes it a member of the
> > +This makes the hook buffer-local, and it makes t a member of the
> 
> This is as good an opportunity as any to question our long-standing
> convention that the symbols `nil` and `t` are treated specially in
> docstrings in the sense that we don't surround them with the customary
> `...'.
> 
> FWIW, I don't find this exception to be beneficial here, nor in cases
> like:
> 
>     `foo' means ...
>     `bar' means ...
>     nil   means ...
>     t     means ...
> 
> Or when a sentence starts with "nil" (where the lack of capital letter
> looks like a typo).
> 
> I think we could at least change our convention to say that nil and
> t don't have to be quoted rather than to say that they should not
> be quoted.

+1

The (new) convention could be discretionary.
There are likely some contexts where it is not
necessary (but it wouldn't hurt).



  parent reply	other threads:[~2019-02-07 14:52 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <20190207085733.4723.6852@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org>
     [not found] ` <20190207085734.B17CF2047A@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org>
2019-02-07 13:12   ` Quoting t and nil in docstrings (was: [Emacs-diffs] master b952385: Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string") Stefan Monnier
2019-02-07 13:30     ` Quoting t and nil in docstrings Robert Pluim
2019-02-07 14:52     ` Drew Adams [this message]
2019-02-08  3:19     ` Quoting t and nil in docstrings (was: [Emacs-diffs] master b952385: Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string") Richard Stallman

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