Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

>     * etc/NEWS, nextstep/README: In these plain text files, quote
>     'like this' consistently, rather than also (sometimes) ‘like this’
>     or (more often) `like this'.

Hi Paul,

Why would you not always use ‘like this’?  Isn't that the most consistent?

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/14/2016 08:44 AM, John Wiegley wrote:
> Why would you not always use ‘like this’?  Isn't that the most consistent?

Yes, and it's easy enough to do that, so I installed that further change.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> Yes, and it's easy enough to do that, so I installed that further change.

Thanks!

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 03/14/2016 06:39 PM, John Wiegley wrote:
>>>>>> Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:
>
>> Yes, and it's easy enough to do that, so I installed that further change.
>
> Thanks!

Will everyone have to put curly quotes into NEWS now? Or will Paul go 
and follow up on every change?

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 09:31:32 -0700
> 
> On 03/14/2016 08:44 AM, John Wiegley wrote:
> > Why would you not always use ‘like this’?  Isn't that the most consistent?
> 
> Yes, and it's easy enough to do that, so I installed that further change.

Are we sure NEWS will always be read either in Emacs or on a terminal
that supports these characters?  I frequently look at it with Less,
but maybe I'm alone.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Clément Pit--Claudel]

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On 03/14/2016 12:42 PM, Dmitry Gutov wrote:
> On 03/14/2016 06:39 PM, John Wiegley wrote:
>>>>>>> Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:
>>
>>> Yes, and it's easy enough to do that, so I installed that further change.
>>
>> Thanks!
> 
> Will everyone have to put curly quotes into NEWS now? Or will Paul go and follow up on every change?

Hey Dmitry,

This is a bit of a tangent, but I find the following function rather convenient for this:

(defun quote-region (beg end)
  "Insert quotes aroung BEG..END."
  (interactive (if (region-active-p)
                   (list (region-beginning) (region-end))
                 (list (point) nil)))
  (let ((quotes (pcase (read-char "Quote type?")
                  (?\` `(?` . ?'))
                  (?\' `(?‘ . ?’))
                  (?\" `(?“ . ?”))
                  (?\[ `(?[ . ?]))
                  (?\{ `(?{ . ?}))
                  (c   `(,c . ,c)))))
    (save-excursion
      (goto-char (or end beg))
      (insert (cdr quotes)))
    (save-excursion
      (goto-char beg)
      (insert (car quotes)))
    (if end
        (goto-char (+ 2 end))
      (goto-char (+ 1 beg)))))

With (global-set-key (kbd "M-\"") 'quote-region), this allows me to press ‘M-" '’ to insert a pair of ‘’, ‘M-" "’ for a pair of “”, and ‘M-" `’ for a pair of `'.

Cheers,
Clément.


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Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Dmitry Gutov]

Hi Clément,

On 03/14/2016 07:19 PM, Clément Pit--Claudel wrote:

> This is a bit of a tangent, but I find the following function rather convenient for this:

Thanks, but personally, I'm quite satisfied with '' or `'.

Paul's recent crusade to put curly quotes everywhere (including Elisp 
docstring syntax) has turned me off them even in plain text files. And 
even if I didn't mind seeing them in plain text, I just don't see the 
point to expend the extra effort to use them (which would be selecting a 
region and invoking a command, in this case).

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Kaushal Modi]

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I also do not understand this extra effort required in plain text files
like NEWS.

It definitely going to happen that people will quote stuff as `something'
(instead of using the curly quotes) and then we will have inconsistent
quotes. Then we will need a script (like what Paul is doing) to convert
those to curly quotes.

Instead, why not just stick to plain ` and ' in such files?

I have got to accept the curly quotes rendering in places like Info page
rendering, stuff showed in echo area by messages and in the docstrings
shown for vars and functions. There, the source code still uses ` and ' and
there are *rendered* as curly quotes.

But in this recent commit, the curly quotes are being hard-coded. The only
concern is that they are not faster/natural to type (inspite of having
key-bindings to do so) compared to typing ` and '. And so we are bound to
have mix of curly/grave/staight quotes in NEWS/etc. wherever we choose to
hard-code the curly quotes.

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RE: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Drew Adams]

>> Thanks, but personally, I'm quite satisfied with '' or `'.
>> Paul's recent crusade to put curly quotes everywhere (including Elisp 
>> docstring syntax) has turned me off them even in plain text files. And 
>> even if I didn't mind seeing them in plain text, I just don't see the 
>> point to expend the extra effort to use them
>
> I also do not understand this extra effort required in plain text
> files like NEWS.
> 
> It definitely going to happen that people will quote stuff as
> `something' (instead of using the curly quotes)

Indeed.  Why?  Because it is easier.  And sufficient.  `...' is
user-friendly to write, and sufficiently user-friendly to read.
So Occam prefers it (even though he no longer uses Emacs on Earth).

> and then we will have inconsistent quotes. Then we will need a
> script (like what Paul is doing) to convert those to curly quotes.
> 
> Instead, why not just stick to plain ` and ' in such files?
> 
> I have got to accept the curly quotes rendering in places like
> Info page rendering, stuff showed in echo area by messages and
> in the docstrings shown for vars and functions. There, the source
> code still uses ` and ' and there are *rendered* as curly quotes.
> 
> But in this recent commit, the curly quotes are being hard-coded.
> The only concern is that they are not faster/natural to type
> (inspite of having key-bindings to do so) compared to typing
> ` and '. And so we are bound to have mix of curly/grave/staight
> quotes in NEWS/etc. wherever we choose to hard-code the curly quotes. 

What Kaushal and Dmitry said.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/14/2016 10:03 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Are we sure NEWS will always be read either in Emacs or on a terminal
> that supports these characters?  I frequently look at it with Less,
> but maybe I'm alone.

I use Less a lot too, and it works fine (Fedora 23). These days the 
problem with non-ASCII characters typically isn't the Less program, it's 
the terminal or operating system being misconfigured for UTF-8, or not 
supporting UTF-8. This problem is not limited to etc/NEWS of course; it 
occurs with all the UTF-8 source files. The question is whether etc/NEWS 
is enough of a special case that we should keep it in ASCII despite the 
rest of Emacs moving to UTF-8.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

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On 03/14/2016 09:42 AM, Dmitry Gutov wrote:
> Will everyone have to put curly quotes into NEWS now? Or will Paul go 
> and follow up on every change? 

I can follow up and nag people for a while, sure. It's not a big deal. 
To make things easier we could install the attached patch, so that 
people can continue to type ` and ' like they're used to, when editing 
etc/NEWS.

Alternatively we could revert commit 
4235d2d9eaa3b64d3172f6c60f1e71704795af89 and go back to straight quoting 
'like this' in etc/NEWS, as was done after my first patch today. That 
would be adequate too, even though (as John said) it is less consistent 
with the rest of the documentation. The main point is that grave quoting 
`like this' is not right in user-facing documentation.

[-- Attachment #2: news.diff --]
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diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index 8f271f5..11f158a 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -2023,5 +2023,6 @@ along with GNU Emacs.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 Local variables:
 coding: utf-8
 mode: outline
+eval: (progn (require 'electric) (electric-quote-local-mode t))
 paragraph-separate: "[ 	\f]*$"
 end:

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 11:24:55 -0700
> 
> The question is whether etc/NEWS is enough of a special case that we
> should keep it in ASCII despite the rest of Emacs moving to UTF-8.

It is for me.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 11:32:57 -0700
> 
> Alternatively we could revert commit 
> 4235d2d9eaa3b64d3172f6c60f1e71704795af89 and go back to straight quoting 
> 'like this' in etc/NEWS, as was done after my first patch today. That 
> would be adequate too, even though (as John said) it is less consistent 
> with the rest of the documentation. The main point is that grave quoting 
> `like this' is not right in user-facing documentation.

I'm okay with quoting 'like this'.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[John Wiegley]

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>>>>> Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> Alternatively we could revert commit
> 4235d2d9eaa3b64d3172f6c60f1e71704795af89 and go back to straight quoting
> 'like this' in etc/NEWS, as was done after my first patch today. That would
> be adequate too, even though (as John said) it is less consistent with the
> rest of the documentation. The main point is that grave quoting `like this'
> is not right in user-facing documentation.

It would be my preference to use `these quotes' in etc/NEWS, and any other
text-based internal documentation, rather than try to use curly quotes
everywhere. It sounds like the preference of a lot of other people as well, in
addition to its being easier to maintain, so let's revert that commit and go
back to `quotes'.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

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Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> I'm okay with quoting 'like this'.

The only problem with that is that when I do anything Emacs-related, my brain
is hard-wired to `quotes'. It screws me up constantly when commenting on
GitHub issues. :) So if we could have "one way of typing it", I'd appreciate
that, even if we have "multiple ways of displaying it".

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Kaushal Modi]

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On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 2:32 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> The main point is that grave quoting `like this' is not right in
> user-facing documentation.


Can a script like the one you used to batch-convert the graves and straight
quotes to curly quotes be made a part of the documentation generation
section in the Makefile?

That way, the source code can remain plan ASCII with ` and '. But when we
build emacs, the generated user-facing NEWS file now has the curly quotes.
That way we have a consistent ASCII source code for NEWS and user-facing
NEWS with curly quotes (generated at build time).

WDYT?

--
Kaushal Modi

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Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com>
> Cc: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org,  dgutov@yandex.ru
> Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 11:48:08 -0700
> 
> >>>>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > I'm okay with quoting 'like this'.
> 
> The only problem with that is that when I do anything Emacs-related, my brain
> is hard-wired to `quotes'. It screws me up constantly when commenting on
> GitHub issues. :) So if we could have "one way of typing it", I'd appreciate
> that, even if we have "multiple ways of displaying it".

I can also live with `like this', but I thought 'this' might be a
compromise everyone will be able to live with.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 03/14/2016 08:32 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:

> I can follow up and nag people for a while, sure. It's not a big deal.

Nagging people is not what I had in mind.

> To make things easier we could install the attached patch, so that
> people can continue to type ` and ' like they're used to, when editing
> etc/NEWS.

The basic idea seems fine. If we agree to go back to using `', we can 
use an `eval' block to add two font-lock rules, to render the quotes in 
a curly fashion when viewer in Emacs.

> Alternatively we could revert commit
> 4235d2d9eaa3b64d3172f6c60f1e71704795af89 and go back to straight quoting
> 'like this' in etc/NEWS, as was done after my first patch today. That
> would be adequate too, even though (as John said) it is less consistent
> with the rest of the documentation.

Consistent with what? Post-rendered .info files?

> The main point is that grave quoting
> `like this' is not right in user-facing documentation.

Where do we show it to the users, aside from inside Emacs?

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/14/2016 11:45 AM, John Wiegley wrote:
> It would be my preference to use `these quotes' in etc/NEWS, and any other
> text-based internal documentation,

etc/NEWS is not internal documentation, as it gets put on the screen 
when one types C-h n. Grave quoting `like this' should not appear in 
text meant for users to see.

The "eval: (progn (require 'electric) (electric-quote-local-mode t))" 
patch would let you continue to type with grave quoting, as it would 
automatically curve the quotes as you type them. As Eli mentioned, 
though, enough people view etc/NEWS in non-UTF-8-aware environments that 
for this particular file it sounds like we should go back to straight 
ASCII for it. Straight quoting 'like this' is the simplest way out, 
which is why I did it that way originally.

RE: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Drew Adams]

> The main point is that grave quoting `like this' is not right
> in user-facing documentation.

Yes, that's your main point.  Not much of a main point, IMHO.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> etc/NEWS is not internal documentation, as it gets put on the screen when
> one types C-h n. Grave quoting `like this' should not appear in text meant
> for users to see.

Could we render the quotes the way that we currently do for Elisp
documentation?

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> The main point is that grave quoting `like this' is not right
>> in user-facing documentation.

> Yes, that's your main point.  Not much of a main point, IMHO.

I would rather we dispensed with all this curly-quoting business, and go back
to using `quotes'. They worked well for so long, and visually there isn't
enough of a difference to justify all this headache.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 03/14/2016 09:39 PM, John Wiegley wrote:

> I would rather we dispensed with all this curly-quoting business, and go back
> to using `quotes'. They worked well for so long, and visually there isn't
> enough of a difference to justify all this headache.

Indeed. As I originally suggested, if we want to see curved quotes, 
let's do that in font-lock.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/14/2016 12:29 PM, John Wiegley wrote:
> Could we render the quotes the way that we currently do for Elisp
> documentation?

Yes, that could be done. We'd need an escape mechanism for the rare 
cases where quotes should not be replaced, as in the following lines:

NEWS:66:unless gfile is explicitly requested via 
--with-file-notification='gfile'.
NEWS:576:(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
NEWS:577:     '("^\\*shell\\*$" . (display-buffer-same-window))).
NEWS:639:folding in the middle of a search by typing ‘M-s '’.
NEWS:1458:for straight apostrophes 'like this', and to ‘grave’ for grave 
accent
NEWS:1459:and apostrophe `like this'.  The default value nil acts like 
‘curve’
NEWS:1745:apostrophe `like-this'.  The new style looks better on today’s 
displays.
NEWS:1747:into documentation by typing ` and '.  Outside Electric Quote 
mode,


If we use substitute-command-keys (simplest), the above lines would turn 
into:

unless gfile is explicitly requested via 
--with-file-notification=\='gfile\='.
(add-to-list \='display-buffer-alist
      \='("^\\*shell\\*$" . (display-buffer-same-window))).
folding in the middle of a search by typing ‘M-s \='’.
for straight apostrophes \='like this\=', and to `grave' for grave accent
and apostrophe \=`like this\='.  The default value nil acts like `curve'
apostrophe \=`like-this\='.  The new style looks better on today's displays.
into documentation by typing \=` and \='.  Outside Electric Quote mode,


Plus, this line:

before, characters preceded by \= are output as-is.


would need to be changed to this:

before, characters preceded by \=\= are output as-is.


The above would all run afoul of Eli's desire to use other programs to 
read etc/NEWS as-is, though.

I'm afraid that straight quoting 'like this' is the simplest way out of 
this mess. It is not a great solution, but it is the simplest and the 
other approaches all have problems that may be worse. This is why the 
patch I originally installed today used straight quoting. How about if 
we simply go back to it? I.e., revert commit 
4235d2d9eaa3b64d3172f6c60f1e71704795af89 and then move on.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> I'm afraid that straight quoting 'like this' is the simplest way out of this
> mess. It is not a great solution, but it is the simplest and the other
> approaches all have problems that may be worse. This is why the patch I
> originally installed today used straight quoting. How about if we simply go
> back to it? I.e., revert commit 4235d2d9eaa3b64d3172f6c60f1e71704795af89 and
> then move on.

Why is this the "simplest way"? Just for a visual correspondence with what we
display in other contexts (PDF and within Emacs)?

I would much rather we kept `quotes' for NEWS then, rather than having an
intermediary 'quotes' form, whose only reason for existing is mere
resemblance.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Paul.

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 01:47:22PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 03/14/2016 12:29 PM, John Wiegley wrote:
> > Could we render the quotes the way that we currently do for Elisp
> > documentation?

> Yes, that could be done. We'd need an escape mechanism for the rare 
> cases where quotes should not be replaced, as in the following lines:

Please don't do that.  NEWS is a text file, not a markup file.  It
should remain readable with "anything".

[ .... ]

> The above would all run afoul of Eli's desire to use other programs to 
> read etc/NEWS as-is, though.

Mine, too.

> I'm afraid that straight quoting 'like this' is the simplest way out of 
> this mess. It is not a great solution, but it is the simplest and the 
> other approaches all have problems that may be worse. This is why the 
> patch I originally installed today used straight quoting. How about if 
> we simply go back to it? I.e., revert commit 
> 4235d2d9eaa3b64d3172f6c60f1e71704795af89 and then move on.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/14/2016 01:50 PM, John Wiegley wrote:
> Why is this the "simplest way"? Just for a visual correspondence with what we
> display in other contexts (PDF and within Emacs)?

"Simplest" in the sense that it is the least work to implement and to 
explain to other developers, under the constraints that (1) user-facing 
text (e.g., C-h n) properly quotes according to the GNU coding 
standards, and (2) other file-viewing programs behave adequately on 
etc/NEWS even on old-fashioned text consoles.

There is plenty of precedent for straight quoting in other text files in 
Emacs, as well as in etc/NEWS itself before today's changes, so I'm 
inclined to go back to it in this particular case even though it's 
neither my first preference nor yours.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/14/2016 01:56 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>
>> >The above would all run afoul of Eli's desire to use other programs to
>> >read etc/NEWS as-is, though.
> Mine, too.
>

OK, I installed a patch that reverts etc/NEWS's recent change to curved 
quotes, and while I was at it I changed etc/NEWS so that it does not 
need the other non-ASCII characters that it was using. For the record, 
these non-ASCII characters were:

“ ” ‐ ‑ ‒ – — ― ‘ ’ “ ” † ‡ • ′ ″ € № ← → ↔ − ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ℀ ℁ ⒜ ⓐ      (<-- 
there are unusual space-like characters here, unless my mailer spirits 
them away...)

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> There is plenty of precedent for straight quoting in other text files in
> Emacs, as well as in etc/NEWS itself before today's changes, so I'm inclined
> to go back to it in this particular case even though it's neither my first
> preference nor yours.

OK, if there's precedent that I'm sure it's fine.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> There is plenty of precedent for straight quoting in other text files
> in Emacs, as well as in etc/NEWS itself before today's changes

Is that because you changed `this' into curly quotes, and then people
protested, and then you changed it into 'this' and people threw up their
arms in disgust, and nothing further was done?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

RE: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Drew Adams]

> > There is plenty of precedent for straight quoting in other text files
> > in Emacs, as well as in etc/NEWS itself before today's changes
> 
> Is that because you changed `this' into curly quotes, and then people
> protested, and then you changed it into 'this' and people threw up their
> arms in disgust, and nothing further was done?

I was going to point out the same thing.  "Plenty of precedent"
by whom and since when?

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/15/2016 04:13 PM, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen wrote:
>> >There is plenty of precedent for straight quoting in other text files
>> >in Emacs, as well as in etc/NEWS itself before today's changes
> Is that because you changed `this' into curly quotes

No, I first changed etc/NEWS to use straight quotes, and switched to 
curved quotes only after what I understood to be John's suggestion to 
that effect. However, later discussion indicated that straight quotes 
were more popular, so I switched back.

Although grave quotes are popular Emacs source code they have never been 
the only style for all text, and straight quotes (though of course not 
perfect) are a better choice for plain text intended for users.

There is longstanding precedent for using straight quotes in some Emacs 
news items. It's not just etc/NEWS before the recent round of changes; 
for example, the NEWS entry for Emacs 1.4 (in etc/NEWS.1-17), circa 
1985, uses straight quotes for its only quoted string, presumably to 
distinguish the quotes from the grave accents elsewhere in the entry.

It shouldn't be a problem for users if NEWS uses straight quotes from 
here on out.

RE: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Drew Adams]

> >>> There is plenty of precedent for straight quoting in other text
> >>> files in Emacs, as well as in etc/NEWS itself before today's
> >>> changes
> >
> > Is that because you changed `this' into curly quotes
> 
> No, I first changed etc/NEWS to use straight quotes, and switched to
> curved quotes only after what I understood to be John's suggestion to
> that effect. However, later discussion indicated that straight quotes
> were more popular, so I switched back.

Were identical straight quotes (') used in NEWS before you used
them?  I don't think so.  Except maybe for the occasional typo.

> Although grave quotes are popular Emacs source code they have
> never been the only style for all text,

In Emacs they have been.  Counter-examples?  Or did you mean all
text anywhere, including outside of Emacs?

> and straight quotes (though of course not perfect) are a better
> choice for plain text intended for users.

There you go again.  You think they are a better choice; OK, we got that.

> There is longstanding precedent for using straight quotes in some Emacs
> news items. It's not just etc/NEWS before the recent round of changes;
> for example, the NEWS entry for Emacs 1.4 (in etc/NEWS.1-17), circa
> 1985, uses straight quotes for its only quoted string, presumably to
> distinguish the quotes from the grave accents elsewhere in the entry.

Holy cow!  Talk about disingenous.  Anyone else bother to check
this?  Dunno what you mean by "its only quoted string", but I
found only the following 5 such occurrences, and these are
clearly all _mistakes_, especially when looked at in context:

1. Rmail command '>' goes to the last message.
2. included and letter 'F' had 
3. the new code letter 'D' which
4. It is like 'f' except
5. The Lisp function 'function' now exists.

When you see something like this it's pretty clear that 'F' is a typo:

 The value should be a string containing `-' followed by letters.
 The letter `l' had better be included and letter 'F' had better
 be excluded!

I checked quickly, so I'll grant that you might be able to find
one or two other occurrences.  I counted 5, but let's say there
might be as many as 10.

Now let's see how many occurrences of `...' there are.  I count
345.  That's 70 to 1.  Or 35 to 1, if we give you the benefit
of the doubt.

> It shouldn't be a problem for users if NEWS uses straight quotes
> from here on out.

Yeah, sure. "From here on out." Setting another precedent, are we?

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> It shouldn't be a problem for users if NEWS uses straight quotes from here
>> on out.

> Yeah, sure. "From here on out." Setting another precedent, are we?

If you wants to normalize the text to use `foo' everywhere, please submit a
patch. I'd rather standardize on that -- if that's what we were doing in the
majority of cases -- than begin switching over to straight quotes because of a
few uses of them.

-- 
John Wiegley                  GPG fingerprint = 4710 CF98 AF9B 327B B80F
http://newartisans.com                          60E1 46C4 BD1A 7AC1 4BA2

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/15/2016 05:52 PM, Drew Adams wrote:
> Were identical straight quotes (') used in NEWS before you used them? 
> I don't think so. Except maybe for the occasional typo.

They were used, and they weren't typos. Straight quoting is an 
alternative style of quoting, which is valid in its own right.

>> Although grave quotes are popular Emacs source code they have
>> never been the only style for all text,
> In Emacs they have been.  Counter-examples?  Or did you mean all
> text anywhere, including outside of Emacs?

I meant within the text files in the Emacs git repository. Although 
grave quoting (with ` and ') has historically been more popular than 
straight quoting (with ' and '), both forms are used, and straight 
quotes are not merely something that I just now added. In particular, 
both quoting styles were used in etc/NEWS even before my changes of this 
week. Last week's commit 985dacfa0f0186531fdae13718d720cf7e27425f of 
etc/NEWS contains at least a dozen uses of straight quoting (I got tired 
of counting after reaching a dozen). Admittedly straight quoting was a 
minority style, but these were not typos.

 >> for example, the NEWS entry for Emacs 1.4 (in etc/NEWS.1-17), circa
 >> 1985, uses straight quotes for its only quoted string, presumably to
 >> distinguish the quotes from the grave accents elsewhere in the entry.
 > ... Dunno what you mean by "its only quoted string",

I meant the only quoted string in the NEWS entry for Emacs 1.4. There is 
just one such string, which you numbered "5" in your list. (Your list 
included NEWS entries for other Emacs releases.) Again, I concede that 
straight quoting was a minority style in NEWS entries, but it was a 
perfectly respectable style and it was not just "typos".

> You think they are a better choice; OK, we got that.

It's not a matter of my personal preference. It's the GNU coding style, 
which reflects a reasonable consensus on user-visible text.

RE: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Drew Adams]

> > Were identical straight quotes (') used in NEWS before you used
> > them?  I don't think so. Except maybe for the occasional typo.
> 
> They were used, and they weren't typos.

Show us some that were not typos, please.

> Straight quoting is an alternative style of quoting, which is
> valid in its own right.

Valid for what?  What yesterday's lunch ended up as is valid
for something, surely.  Everything is valid for something.
Validity is always relative to some standard, or spec.

The only reasonable notion of "valid" for Emacs is "valid for Emacs",
which means whatever Emacs Dev decides it means.

> >> Although grave quotes are popular Emacs source code they have
> >> never been the only style for all text,
> >
> > In Emacs they have been.  Counter-examples?  Or did you mean all
> > text anywhere, including outside of Emacs?
> 
> I meant within the text files in the Emacs git repository. Although
> grave quoting (with ` and ') has historically been more popular than
> straight quoting (with ' and '), 

Not just "more popular".  That was the Emacs _convention_.  Since
Day One (AFAIK).

> both forms are used, 

Where?  Emacs GIT?  Hardly a great reference, if you are looking
for what Emacs convention has been.

> and straight quotes are not merely something that I just now added.

You added them a while ago, I guess.

> In particular, both quoting styles were used in etc/NEWS even before
> my changes of this week.  Last week's commit 
> 985dacfa0f0186531fdae13718d720cf7e27425f of etc/NEWS contains at least
> a dozen uses of straight quoting (I got tired of counting after
> reaching a dozen). Admittedly straight quoting was a minority style,
> but these were not typos.

I discount anything recent.  The whole convention thing has been
tossed on its head.  You wouldn't happen to know who started down
that road, would you?

>  >> for example, the NEWS entry for Emacs 1.4 (in etc/NEWS.1-17), circa
>  >> 1985, uses straight quotes for its only quoted string, presumably to
>  >> distinguish the quotes from the grave accents elsewhere in the entry.
>  > ... Dunno what you mean by "its only quoted string",
> 
> I meant the only quoted string in the NEWS entry for Emacs 1.4. There is
> just one such string, which you numbered "5" in your list. (Your list
> included NEWS entries for other Emacs releases.)

Right. I checked the whole file etc/NEWS.1-17, which contains NEWS for
releases 1.1 through 1.17.  5 occurrences of '...'; 345 occurrences of
`...'.  70 to 1 ratio.  Five typos.  Hardly "an alternative style of
quoting" used by Emacs.

> Again, I concede that straight quoting was a minority style in
> NEWS entries, but it was a perfectly respectable style

Not much of a concession.  Typos, not a "minority style" for Emacs.

Again, "perfectly respectable", like "valid", is defined by Emacs Dev.
It's about a convention, and one set by Emacs Dev, not just by some
outside notion of popularity or frequency of use.

> and it was not just "typos".

I disagree about that.  Based even on just the file you pointed us to.
See my previous mail for details.

> > You think they are a better choice; OK, we got that.
> 
> It's not a matter of my personal preference. It's the GNU coding
> style, which reflects a reasonable consensus on user-visible text.

What is the _GNU Emacs_ quoting style?  It WAS `...'.  Now it is
apparently up for grabs.  Based notably on your efforts to change
it and your appeals to other styles.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/16/2016 02:26 PM, Drew Adams wrote:
>> >They were used, and they weren't typos.
> Show us some that were not typos, please.
>

You want more examples? OK, here are a few in etc/NEWS.24:

    1919:**** Improved support for 'extern "C"' declarations in C/C++.
    1922:such as '__nonnull' and '__asm'.  Add '__cplusplus' macro when 
parsing C++.
    1931:**** Support for the Python 'WITH' and 'AT' keywords.

and in etc/NEWS before this week's changes:

      90:** The configure option '--with-gameuser' now allows you to 
specify a
      91:group instead of a user if its argument is prefixed by ':' (a 
colon).
      94:be installed setgid.  The option now defaults to the 'games' group.

There are more where these came from. These are not typos; they're the 
straight quoting style. Admittedly they are a minority of NEWS lines, 
but my impression is that the style's prevalence was growing in 
more-recent NEWS entries, even before this week's changes. And that's 
understandable, as the GNU coding standards in this area were changed 
relatively recently (compared to the entire Emacs timeline, that is).

> You wouldn't happen to know who started down
> that road, would you?

Markus Kuhn's web page on the topic 
<https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html> says that ISO 8859-1 
specified the current behavior where ` and ' are not symmetric; before 
that, ASCII was ambiguous and many displays used symmetric quotes. ISO 
8859-1 was derived from ECMA-94, which was developed sometime in the 
early 1980s by the ANSI X3L2 Technical Committee on Codes and Character 
Sets. So it appears that ANSI/X3L2 bears at least some of the 
responsibility for the road we're traveling on.

Personally I prefer symmetric quotes, and wish that ANSI/X3L2 had chosen 
otherwise. But we can't reasonably expect to change how Unicode works in 
this area.

RE: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Drew Adams]

> > You wouldn't happen to know who started down that road, would you?
> 
> Markus Kuhn's web page on the topic...

It was clear that I meant started _Emacs_ down that road.