From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Drew Adams" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: RE: Remove * characters from the front of variable docstrings Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:43:53 -0700 Message-ID: <8CA396E6D69242EF87F96F0A01695DA3@us.oracle.com> References: <838vhii72w.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1335473053 25550 80.91.229.3 (26 Apr 2012 20:44:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:44:13 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: "'Eli Zaretskii'" , "'Glenn Morris'" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Apr 26 22:44:12 2012 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 1SNVXv-0004yk-PN for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:44:11 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:49161 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SNVXv-0001Wc-3t for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:44:11 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:35366) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SNVXr-0001WJ-Ve for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:44:09 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SNVXq-00010F-8G for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:44:07 -0400 Original-Received: from rcsinet15.oracle.com ([148.87.113.117]:40847) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SNVXm-0000zU-Hh; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:44:02 -0400 Original-Received: from ucsinet22.oracle.com (ucsinet22.oracle.com [156.151.31.94]) by rcsinet15.oracle.com (Sentrion-MTA-4.2.2/Sentrion-MTA-4.2.2) with ESMTP id q3QKhtvv003379 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=OK); Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:43:58 GMT Original-Received: from acsmt358.oracle.com (acsmt358.oracle.com [141.146.40.158]) by ucsinet22.oracle.com (8.14.4+Sun/8.14.4) with ESMTP id q3QKhtRw025808 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:43:55 GMT Original-Received: from abhmt105.oracle.com (abhmt105.oracle.com [141.146.116.57]) by acsmt358.oracle.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id q3QKhsLC025044; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:43:54 -0500 Original-Received: from dradamslap1 (/130.35.178.194) by default (Oracle Beehive Gateway v4.0) with ESMTP ; Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:43:54 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: Ac0j6TZcn7YMi9bjSCCIfyt6Xl2BFAAABZRQ In-Reply-To: <838vhii72w.fsf@gnu.org> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 X-Source-IP: ucsinet22.oracle.com [156.151.31.94] X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 1) X-Received-From: 148.87.113.117 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:150061 Archived-At: > > I was glad to see the "*" chars finally disappearing in > > trunk r107813. Why? Who were those `*' chars hurting? > I wasn't, FWIW. Suddenly "M-x set-variable" doesn't work with > variables I was used to since about forever. I agree with Eli. I pointed out the problem prior to the change: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2012-02/msg00419.html Others in the thread also disagreed with this change. Here's a XEmacs perspective: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2012-02/msg00455.html Note that that thread _started_ with the innocuous _question_ of which Emacs versions require `*' here. Some 3rd-party Emacs code tries to maintain compatibility with older Emacs versions. So it still uses `*' in defcustoms, which is perfectly normal. But now you have introduced the bug (still not fixed or even responded to) that for such definitions the `*' shows up _as part of the help text_ when you use `C-h v': http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=10475 Yet the fix for that bug is trivial, as the bug report mentions: (when (eq ?* (elt doc 0)) (setq doc (substring doc 1))) On n'arrete pas le progres... Aren't there more important things to work on than introducing such bugs and additional hurdles for 3rd-party code?