Re: Display of undisplayable characters: \U01F3A8 instead of diamond

[chad <yandros@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1549 bytes --]

On Fri, Sep 2, 2022 at 3:25 PM Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> wrote:

> > I understand (academically) that once someone has adapted
> > themselves to a particular set of bugs, shortcomings, and
> > limitations
>
> But here the bug was actually better from our perspective ...
>

The bug was better in that the undefined behavior from sending known-bad
data to the console hasn't yet caused you trouble that you've identified.
Everyone (who's looked at the code) acknowledges that it was doing the
wrong thing. The fact that the bug didn't hurt you and you got used to it
is exactly what I meant by "adapted themselves".

What the other user (RMS, in this case) _wanted_ to do was to use a console
(not window system) emacs to look at a range of characters that extends
beyond ASCII. The specific implementations he was using did that right some
of the time and wrong some of the time. When it was wrong, it failed in a
certain way. He adapted himself to that failure.

The alternative that emacs-devel is trying to establish (via experiments,
etc/PROBLEMS changes, and perhaps code patches) will make the system fail
less often -- that is, do what the user wants more often. The argument in
question is basically "Don't make the software do what the user wants more
often if it changes away from the bugs that are already familiar to me",
especially when that argument is expressed *in the middle of fixing the
problem*, as a discouragement from fixing the problem for all users, then
we've arrived at "That's horrifying." ala XKCD 1172.

~Chad

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2039 bytes --]