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 9ffb6ce 5/5: Quoting fixes in lisp/international and lisp/leim Date: Sun, 06 Sep 2015 21:28:17 -0400 Message-ID: References: <20150831061236.27796.57762@vcs.savannah.gnu.org> <55E3F434.2060507@yandex.ru> <55E496DC.1030608@cs.ucla.edu> <877foas9jh.fsf@gmail.com> <55E5FBA8.3090807@cs.ucla.edu> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1441589340 438 80.91.229.3 (7 Sep 2015 01:29:00 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2015 01:29:00 +0000 (UTC) Cc: monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Paul Eggert Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Sep 07 03:28:49 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 1ZYlEn-00077n-NH for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 07 Sep 2015 03:28:49 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:51846 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZYlEn-00077I-N3 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 06 Sep 2015 21:28:49 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:33683) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZYlEM-000736-CU for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 06 Sep 2015 21:28:23 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZYlEL-0008EH-5s for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 06 Sep 2015 21:28:22 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:33874) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZYlEI-0008AY-3B; Sun, 06 Sep 2015 21:28:18 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1ZYlEH-0002rp-6d; Sun, 06 Sep 2015 21:28:17 -0400 In-reply-to: <55E5FBA8.3090807@cs.ucla.edu> (message from Paul Eggert on Tue, 1 Sep 2015 12:25:28 -0700) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Error: Malformed IPv6 address (bad octet value). X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e 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:189661 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. ]]] > * English phrases, e.g., `close in spirit', `things'. English quotations should use doublequotes. We use singlequotes only to present strings of example text to be processed in a program somehow. In the case of Emacs, they are for text that gets manipulated inside Emacs. > * Key sequences, e.g., `C-x ESC O P'. Key sequences (which only go through the keyboard) shouldn't be quoted with singlequotes, or any kind of quotes. * Lisp patterns, e.g., `(ATOM . ELLIPSIS)'. * Lisp code, e.g., `(thai nil nil (mark))'. These two cases (which are really the same case, since you can put a metasyntactic variable into anything) are not supposed to be quoted with singlequotes. The following cases do get quoted with singlequotes: * Symbols, e.g., `load-file' * Info nodes, e.g., `(emacs)Lisp Libraries'. * URLs, e.g., `http://bama.ua.edu/cgi-bin/man-cgi?lp' * Characters, e.g., `&', ` '. * Strings, e.g., `69'. * Regular expressions, e.g., `\\(_P\\|_PROTO\\)'. * Non-Lisp code, e.g., `ls -lR'. It could conceivably be useful to use multiple kinds of quotation to distinguish among these cases. But we can't have enough kinds of quotation marks to give each of these its own kind. One would need to use quoting style A for some of then, style B for some others, style C for some others, etc. It would take careful thought to figure out how to distribute (say) three styles of showing quotes among those different uses. I am not sure it is worth doing anything about. -- 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.