Re: evaluating numbers

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org>
> Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 20:18:58 +0900
> 
> > But I see no reason to continue questioning the default any further.
> 
> I'm not questioning the default, I'm trying to understand a feature and it's default setting. Apologies if that takes time.

I'm happy to explain what is still unclear.  It seemed to me that the
latest questions all aim at asking why not do something other than the
default, they don't ask clarifications about the feature, which is
really quite simple.  Apologies if this is my misunderstanding.

> >> If we have a function like (char-after) that is defined as "Return(ing) character in current buffer at position POS." then it should do that for all the characters defined in the emacs supported character set, shouldn't it?
> > 
> > Characters are just integers in Emacs.
> 
> I know that. You're not really answering the above question. When people expect a character to be returned, they expect a character and not a code point.

I don't think I agree, not when you say it in such general form.  It
is definitely possible that the user does want to see the codepoint.
I know I sometimes do.

> How useful is:
> 
> (decode-char 'emacs 345)
> 345 (#o531, #x159)
> 
> ?
> 
> I already know that the code point is 345.

Yes, but did you know its octal and hex codes as well?  I sometimes do
the above, or something similar, for those reasons.

> > If you want to suggest a different way of looking for a suitable font, please do.
> 
> Maybe not "look for a suitable font" but set a default font for that action. There is a finite number of standard fonts on systems that support emacs.

Unfortunately, the last sentence is in general incorrect.  The reality
is that no font (at least none that I know of) supports all of
Unicode, so we will need to have several fonts from which to select.
And that is tricky if you want the result work on all platforms.