Re: libnettle/libhogweed WIP

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2017 08:22:10 -0400
> 
> > I see the confusion. Yes, I want to allow multibyte input. Users
> > shouldn't have to jump through hoops to use these functions.
> 
> FWIW, I disagree.  You should check that either the string is unibyte
> (AKA byte_size<0) or that it's ASCII-only (byte_size==size).
> 
> Forcing your users to (de|en)code explicitly before calling your
> functions isn't making them jump through hoops: it's helping them have
> the correct mental model of what "multibyte text" means.

I tend to agree.

But maybe we should make a step back and discuss the various use cases
for passing non-ASCII text to these functions.  Why would a user want
that, and what would they expect to happen, when this is done from
within Emacs (as opposed to reading text from some file or accepting
it as a string).

I think it's important to discuss the expected results, because we
could avoid encoding the string, either inside or outside of the
functions, and just use its bytes instead, disregarding their
interpretation as characters.  The question is: would that yield what
users will want and expect?  The answer could be YES in some use cases
and NO in others.