Re: A simple solution to "Upcoming loss of usability ..."

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

Oleh Krehel wrote:
> I hope most people will agree that having two notations for one thing is
> bad for everyone: both novices and experts.

Of course.  The problem is that Emacs Lisp currently lacks notation and 
mechanism for doing the right thing with respect to user preference in quoting 
style.  It will be a hassle to modify the old ASCII-only notation and 
implementation to address this problem while remaining ASCII-only.  (I've 
started that job, but it's by no means done.)

In contrast, it's quite simple to use curved quotes to denote quotes.

There's no question that we'll continue to support the old ASCII-only style 
indefinitely, even though it's relatively clumsy and confusing.  The only 
question is whether we'll also support a simpler style in which quotes normally 
stand for themselves, with the idea of moving to the simpler in the long run if 
it works out.  That is, the question is whether the long-term gain is worth the 
extra short-term pain.  (No matter what we do, we'll have some short-term pain; 
this is inevitable.)

This is a judgment call, and the conservative approach is of course to add some 
more escape sequence complication to our ASCII-only approach, and/or to use 
gimmicks like font-lock mode to display characters other than what's actually in 
the buffer.  But really, it's much simpler to use quotes to denote quotes, some 
of us prefer doing it the simpler way, and we should give the simpler 
alternative a try.