Re: On the masking of undisplayable characters

[Yuri Khan <yuri.v.khan@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 3:32 PM, Artur Malabarba
<bruce.connor.am@gmail.com> wrote:

> Let's say the user is reading some code designed to read a stream and
> do something with quotation marks. Or maybe the user is reading prose
> in a context where typography is important.

That description sounds like me, and in my view the context includes:

* any text-based files meant to be read by humans;
* any user-directed text strings in program code;
* any comments in program code that are meant to be read by humans (as
opposed to compiler pragma directives).

> Usually they'll have a font to display these round quotations, but if
> they start emacs without a graphical frame for one reason or another
> (or, god forbid, they've misconfigured something) then it would a
> problem that they see " when they actually have “ or ”.

If I have misconfigured something and see straight quotes instead of
curly quotes in an X frame, I will notice it right away and start
investigating.

The same applies to a terminal frame running in an X-based terminal emulator.

If I am on a Linux terminal, typography will be the least of my
concern. I will be busy getting my X display up and running again, or
getting my system working, or resolving whatever other disaster that
forced me out of X. Heck, even my native alphabet is not displayed
properly on the Linux tty.

On a Windows machine in a graphical frame, the situation is analogous to X.

On a Windows console with a proper vector font, the situation is
analogous to an X-based terminal.

On a Windows console with a bitmap font, I would expect degraded
typography, and either use C-x = on each suspect quote, or take my
time migrating to a better environment.

(Side note: Two editors that I sometimes use beside Emacs display the
code of the character under cursor in their status lines. This is very
convenient when checking for unusual characters. Emacs can be set up
to do the same by adding “(:eval (format "%06x" (following-char)))” to
the mode-line-format variable.)