From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Suggest installing more fonts? Date: Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:12:25 -0400 Message-ID: References: <87wnzqa1be.fsf@gnus.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="6349"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: larsi@gnus.org, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Gregory Heytings Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sun Oct 18 06:14:38 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kU05e-0001VN-AA for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sun, 18 Oct 2020 06:14:38 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:55634 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kU05d-0001ko-BZ for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:14:37 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:54536) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kU03Y-0007lq-Ew for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:12:28 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:38193) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kU03X-00082M-Tf; Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:12:27 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1kU03V-0000JU-0I; Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:12:25 -0400 In-Reply-To: (emacs-devel@gnu.org) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 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-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:257991 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. ]]] > A user has (usually) no idea of these "several problems", and knows even > less how to fix them. For such users the problem is simply "Emacs > displays gibberish". If we can reproduce that case, we might be able to implement changes that would detect some of the causes of the gibberish, and take action either to (1) provide a fallback substitute for something or (2) give a meaningful and useful error message. That would be a step forward, at least; and after that we could see what problems users still encounter. > So IMO for these users it would be much better to display characters with > a low-resolution font, together with a warning (and perhaps a pointer to a > short guide) (as a help-echo and/or in the echo area), instead of a tofu. I don't know what you mean by "tofu", but your idea of displaying the right character in the wrong font, rather than gibberish, sounds useful. The possible challenge would be deciding when to do this. When would users prefer this, and when would users prefer what Emacs does now? -- Dr Richard Stallman Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)