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

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

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Dmitry Gutov wrote:
>>
>
> Ok, try this, please. "\\" before a quote keeps it untranslated.
>
> However, it order for us to be able to show an arbitrary number of backslashes
> before a quote (both translated or not), the backslashes also escape themselves.
> I've limited this effect to only before a quote, so that we don't have to add
> them in a lot of places (like substitute-command-keys docstring).

That rule is too complicated.  Please let's keep it simple.  It's simpler to 
explain if the escape sequence always works.  It should be rare to need these 
escapes, so it's OK if they are multicharacter.  How about your other suggestion 
of using backslash-tilde?  This would be \\~ in the source-file string.  This is 
unlikely to occur in docstrings; there are no occurrences in the current Emacs 
sources.

> +Quote \\'like this\\' if the value is ?\\' (apostrophe).
> ...
> +Quote \\`like this\\' if the value is ?\\` (grave accent).

There should be no need to escape the apostrophes in these lines (see the next 
comment).

> +   nil '(("\\(?:\\=\\|[^\\]\\)\\(\\\\*\\)[`']"

First, this translates all apostrophes to quotes.  It should translate only the 
apostrophes that are used as quotes (i.e., those that match grave accents). 
That's what the current master does, and what your earlier prototype did.  We 
shouldn't try to second-guess unmatched apostrophe, any more than we should try 
to second-guess double-quote.

Second, the last bracketed RE should be [`'‘’] if we are to mimic the 
current-master behavior.  (However, please see the next comment.)

> +           ((or (and (null help-quote-translation)
> +                     (char-displayable-p ?‘))
> +                (eq help-quote-translation ?‘))

As I understand it, the need for help-quote-translation has gone away, since the 
primary impetus for it was that one couldn't easily search for quotes, and that 
problem has been fixed in the meantime by Artur's commits.  So this part can be 
simplified and the code can always assume that the above expression evaluates to 
t.  (This is also true of the current master of course.)

> I meant an example of a Help buffer where we must not translate quotes in the value.

Ah, OK, try loading the attached file.  The file name contains accent grave and 
apostrophe, which should not be translated when one types ‘C-h v foo’.

PS.  Can you please attach patches instead of pasting them bodily into your 
email?  I could not apply the patch in your email automatically, as some 
characters were munged somewhere in the process.


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(defvar foo
  "`xxx-yyy' \\`zzz-www' \\~`aaa-bbb\\~'"
  "Don't ask me what this variable does.")