Re: Change of Lisp syntax for "fancy" quotes in Emacs 27?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: npostavs@users.sourceforge.net, emacs-devel@gnu.org, drew.adams@oracle.com
> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2018 16:02:09 -0700
> 
> However, that would be heading in the wrong direction, because we 
> shouldn't assume that Elisp code is reviewed only via Emacs. I regularly 
> use Savannah's web interface to look at Elisp source code diffs, for 
> example, and there's lots of other ways I and other developers use 
> non-Emacs programs to look at Elisp source. Because reading source code 
> is an essential property of free software, and because it would set a 
> bad precedent if we said or implied that one really should use only 
> Emacs to read Elisp code, we can't sufficiently address the problem 
> merely by highlighting characters when Emacs is viewing them in a 
> certain way and saying or implying that people should use only Emacs to 
> review Elisp code.
> 
> I'm not arguing that Elisp should prohibit symbols from containing 
> confusing characters, only that these characters should be easily 
> recognizable in plain-text source code, without requiring Emacs itself 
> (configured a certain way) to view the source. For example, if we 
> required a backslash before every confusable character in a symbol, that 
> would go a long way toward addressing the problem.

I agree that viewing ELisp code outside of Emacs is a valid use case.
But I don't think a backslash before these non-ASCII quotes will
significantly lower the confusion potential when those characters are
used in the source.

Basically, there's a contradiction here between our desire not to
confuse relatively inexperienced users of ELisp and help them avoid
problems which might be hard to figure out, and our desire not to
annoy experienced users.  Personally, I think that using faces strikes
a good balance between these contradictory motives.  I don't see how
we can be harsh to uses of these characters without actually
prohibiting their use in symbols.