Re: [simon.marshall@misys.com: Font Lock on-the-fly misfontification in C++]

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> Good morning, Richard!
>
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 07:59:55PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
>
>> To speak of "GNU Emacs" and "XEmacs" gives the impression that
>> XEmacs has nothing to do with GNU.
>
> XEmacs isn't maintained by the GNU project.

Correct.

>> Since XEmacs is a forked version of Emacs, that is a misleading
>> impression.  Please write "Emacs" and "XEmacs", or else "GNU Emacs"
>> and "GNU XEmacs".
>
> "Emacs", unqualified, can be ambiguous.

No.

> It can mean either (i) "an editor of the Emacs persuasion";

In which case you can write "Emacsen".  Anyway, there are quite more
"editors of the Emacs persuasion", such as MicroEmacs and jed, and we
don't mean them when writing "Emacs", either.

If you mean "Emacs or XEmacs", write "Emacs or XEmacs".

> or (ii) "the best editor in the world, maintained by the GNU
> project".

This is redundant.

> In contexts where it is important to emphasise that (ii) is meant,
> surely "GNU Emacs" is what to write.

Please read the Emacs FAQ entry.  We don't need to go through all that
_again_.  It has been discussed to death already.

> "XEmacs", by contrast, means what it means.  It's what its
> maintainers call it.

So why would "Emacs" not mean what its maintainers call it?

Here is the FAQ entry:

(info "(efaq) Difference between Emacs and XEmacs.")

[...]

       If you want to talk about these two versions and distinguish
    them, please call them "Emacs" and "XEmacs."  To contrast "XEmacs"
    with "GNU Emacs" would be misleading, since XEmacs too has its
    origin in the work of the GNU Project.  Terms such as "Emacsen"
    and "(X)Emacs" are not wrong, but they are not very clear, so it
    is better to write "Emacs and XEmacs."

We have had lots of discussions before settling on this, so please
don't start it again.  We need to get work done.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum