From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: master ff4de1b: Fix quoting style in Lisp comments Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2021 16:44:40 +0000 Message-ID: References: <9672aeae-a969-1526-003b-abb1b00b5b49@yandex.ru> <87sfy43dlt.fsf@gnus.org> <1a0f9230b7d75e426474@heytings.org> <1a0f9230b71c3d2eff86@heytings.org> <835yuz8na8.fsf@gnu.org> <1a0f9230b7571d4c3293@heytings.org> <831r5n8kqa.fsf@gnu.org> <1a0f9230b74fe15d1abf@heytings.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="20484"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: Stefan Kangas , Emacs developers , martin rudalics , Gregory Heytings , Stefan Monnier , Dmitry Gutov , Eli Zaretskii , Juri Linkov , Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen To: Yuri Khan Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Fri Sep 17 18:57:16 2021 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 1mRHAp-00056w-3o for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 17 Sep 2021 18:57:15 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:37714 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mRHAn-0000w3-Vi for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 17 Sep 2021 12:57:14 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:40330) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mRGyk-0004U0-9y for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 17 Sep 2021 12:44:46 -0400 Original-Received: from colin.muc.de ([193.149.48.1]:54839 helo=mail.muc.de) by eggs.gnu.org with smtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mRGyi-00058B-JD for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 17 Sep 2021 12:44:46 -0400 Original-Received: (qmail 15294 invoked by uid 3782); 17 Sep 2021 16:44:41 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (p4fe159e7.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [79.225.89.231]) (using STARTTLS) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Fri, 17 Sep 2021 18:44:41 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 7724 invoked by uid 1000); 17 Sep 2021 16:44:40 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Submission-Agent: TMDA/1.3.x (Ph3nix) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de Received-SPF: pass client-ip=193.149.48.1; envelope-from=acm@muc.de; helo=mail.muc.de X-Spam_score_int: -18 X-Spam_score: -1.9 X-Spam_bar: - X-Spam_report: (-1.9 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, SPF_HELO_NONE=0.001, SPF_PASS=-0.001 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no X-Spam_action: no action 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:274897 Archived-At: On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 23:21:41 +0700, Yuri Khan wrote: > On Fri, 17 Sept 2021 at 19:32, Gregory Heytings wrote: > > Except that doing this throws the baby out with the bathwater. If > > some think it looks ugly, it is IMO better to make it look better, > > instead of stopping to use it. Because it's much easier to parse > > (as a pair) than double apostrophes. It's a historical accident > > that ASCII included paired {} () [] <>, but no paired quotation > > marks. > It’s a historical accident that the typewriter character set conflated > the opening single quote, closing single quote, apostrophe, acute > accent, and single prime. It is also a historical accident that the > grave accent ` was born as a separate spacing character at all — and > that is why I, among others, consider it ugly. Both these accidents > are canonically fixed by Unicode. Unicode is just a code. To say it's a fix for the current problems is to make a category error. What you're really saying is that some Unicode decorative (as opposed to functional) characters solve this problem. They don't, precisely because they're only decorative characters. > In my opinion, it is a mistake to avoid Unicode characters for the > reason that some terminals cannot display them. In my opinion, it's a good reason to avoid these impractical characters, but not the most important one. > Teach those terminals to map them to dumb quotes instead. Also, if > Unicode quotation marks are hard to enter, push for better keyboard > layouts. This is the killer. These decorative quote marks aren't merely hard to enter, they're near to impossible on a qwerty (or similar) keyboard layout. This is a marked inconvenience to me when reading Info manuals. I used to be able to search for the `marks' around symbols. Since the TexInfo people started using decorative characters, I can't do this any more. I can't type these characters. More to the point, I can't refer to them after other people have typed them. Their introduction would signal a loss in productivity and and increase in irritation for Emacs developers. The thing to alter, as Gregory said, is the appearance of the ASCII characters on the terminals of those who find them annoying. > (Personally, I have all of “”‘’…–—«»°®©™≤≥§−±×÷≈ in my AltGr layer.) I only have characters there I need only rarely. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).