From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Quoting t and nil in docstrings (was: [Emacs-diffs] master b952385: Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string") Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:19:41 -0500 Message-ID: References: <20190207085733.4723.6852@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org> <20190207085734.B17CF2047A@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="69989"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" Cc: aaptel@suse.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Stefan Monnier Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Feb 08 04:20:28 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1grwiK-000I8C-ED for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 08 Feb 2019 04:20:28 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:50289 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1grwiJ-0000vp-EU for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:20:27 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:46623) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1grwhe-0000uA-Ht for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:19:47 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:36896) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1grwhZ-0008FU-W7; Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:19:43 -0500 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1grwhZ-0005SO-DJ; Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:19:41 -0500 In-Reply-To: (message from Stefan Monnier on Thu, 07 Feb 2019 08:12:04 -0500) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 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" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:233099 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. ]]] > This is as good an opportunity as any to question our long-standing > convention that the symbols `nil` and `t` are treated specially in > docstrings in the sense that we don't surround them with the customary > `...'. I decided on that exception because generally it is convenient. Symbols as fundamental as t and nil don't need markup. > I think we could at least change our convention to say that nil and > t don't have to be quoted rather than to say that they should not > be quoted. I would agree with saying it is ok to give them quotes in special cases where that makes the text clearer. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)