From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Paul Eggert Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Character literals for Unicode (control) characters Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 08:11:43 -0800 Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Message-ID: <56D8623F.6060806@cs.ucla.edu> References: <87r3fsjenn.fsf@gnus.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1457021542 16234 80.91.229.3 (3 Mar 2016 16:12:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 16:12:22 +0000 (UTC) To: Lars Ingebrigtsen , emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Mar 03 17:12:13 2016 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 1abVrF-0002qM-9W for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 03 Mar 2016 17:12:09 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:35948 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1abVrE-0008MN-Gj for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 03 Mar 2016 11:12:08 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:37853) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1abVqz-0008MH-VA for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Mar 2016 11:11:54 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1abVqu-0002eC-SF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Mar 2016 11:11:53 -0500 Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([131.179.128.68]:51746) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1abVqu-0002e6-Mr for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Mar 2016 11:11:48 -0500 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C8E9161009; Thu, 3 Mar 2016 08:11:47 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10032) with ESMTP id ckW_8KrGRY74; Thu, 3 Mar 2016 08:11:46 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id C3F71160FF7; Thu, 3 Mar 2016 08:11:46 -0800 (PST) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at zimbra.cs.ucla.edu Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10026) with ESMTP id VgUmq2hVa8jB; Thu, 3 Mar 2016 08:11:46 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from penguin.cs.ucla.edu (Penguin.CS.UCLA.EDU [131.179.64.200]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id AA86C160FF5; Thu, 3 Mar 2016 08:11:46 -0800 (PST) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.6.0 In-Reply-To: <87r3fsjenn.fsf@gnus.org> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 131.179.128.68 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:200893 Archived-At: On 03/02/2016 09:47 PM, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote: > And then I thought -- well, if we should have a literal syntax for > Unicode control characters, why not for all of them? Something like that would make sense. The escape sequence should bracket=20 the name, so that the escape sequences could be used in strings without=20 ambiguity. Something like \u[NAME], say. I'd still prefer to use characters as-is in strings if they're=20 displayable, e.g., the Lisp string: "Use Greek capital letters (=CE=91=E2=80=93=CE=A9) to denote figures." is more readable than: "Use Greek capital letters (\u[GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA]\u[EN=20 DASH]\u[GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA]) to denote figures." But for undisplayable or hard-to-read characters the escape sequence=20 would be a win. More issues: should we insist on the full official name? should we allow=20 obsolescent aliases? lower-case instead of upper case? initial prefixes=20 of names?