From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 9ce1d38: Use curved quotes in core elisp diagnostics Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:20:09 -0400 Message-ID: References: <20150816160149.9416.80132@vcs.savannah.gnu.org> <55D1043C.3030909@yandex.ru> <20150816225346.GA5367@acm.fritz.box> <55D2C080.2000806@cs.ucla.edu> <87wpwt5619.fsf@gnu.org> <55D36CB5.10803@cs.ucla.edu> <878u9879q9.fsf@igel.home> <19BD5D76-06A0-4FC0-A46F-760B2C27D321@gmail.com> <20150818194253.GE2262@acm.fritz.box> <0ac95dde-75ba-464b-90b2-1b19b348473e@default> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1440447682 30658 80.91.229.3 (24 Aug 2015 20:21:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2015 20:21:22 +0000 (UTC) Cc: acm@muc.de, yandros@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Drew Adams Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Aug 24 22:21:12 2015 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 1ZTyEv-0004de-UI for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 24 Aug 2015 22:21:10 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:56588 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZTyEv-0000Qr-Aq for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:21:09 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:33762) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZTyE7-0008Vs-QW for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:20:24 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZTyE4-0001EQ-SA for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:20:19 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([208.118.235.10]:57519) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZTyDy-00011e-H1; Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:20:10 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1ZTyDx-0003UE-Pc; Mon, 24 Aug 2015 16:20:09 -0400 In-reply-to: <0ac95dde-75ba-464b-90b2-1b19b348473e@default> (message from Drew Adams on Tue, 18 Aug 2015 13:17:56 -0700 (PDT)) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 208.118.235.10 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:189131 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > I think you may have misunderstood what the controversy is about. > > It's not about adding or not adding support for curly quotes and curly > > ellipses in users' documents. It's about whether or not to replace > > ` and ' in Emacs's source files' error messages and comments with > > curly quotes, For overall ease of maintenance, I think we should discourage use of curly quotes and other non-ASCII characters in comments within Emacs sources and Emacs packages, because they are a _gratuitous_ impediment to some developers' editing the sources. That is, they cause trouble for some, while providing no _practical_ benefit to anyone. However, I see two exceptions where non-ASCII characters ought to be used. * When giving someone's name, that is normally written with accented letters, it is reasonable to write the person's name correctly. If your terminal can't display those characters, you'll still see the name more or less, and it won't interfere with your understanding of the code (since the name doesn't explain the code). * When talking about the use of specific non-ASCII characters, it is reasonable to write those characters literally. In this case, mentioning those characters is not gratuitous. Does anyone suggest other exceptions? -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.