Single quotes in Info

Single quotes in Info

[Marcin Borkowski]

Hello all,

I'm not sure about it, but it seems that after upgrading from 24.3 to
25.0.50.1, the Info buffer is a bit uglified.  First, it uses some face
I don't like for variable and function names – but if this annoys me too
much, I can change it easily.  Worse, instead of e.g. `t' it now says
‘t’, for instance (i.e., it uses Unicode single quotation marks).

This is extremely annoying, since it makes incremental searching for
single-quoted strings much harder.

I apropos'ed the "Info-" variables and grepped the list for "quot",
"unicode" and "single", all to no avail, and ran out of ideas.  Is this
behavior customizable?  How to get back to ASCII quotes?

TIA,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

RE: Single quotes in Info

[Drew Adams]

> I'm not sure about it, but it seems that after upgrading from 24.3 to
> 25.0.50.1, the Info buffer is a bit uglified.  First, it uses some face
> I don't like for variable and function names – but if this annoys me too
> much, I can change it easily.  Worse, instead of e.g. `t' it now says
> ‘t’, for instance (i.e., it uses Unicode single quotation marks).
> 
> This is extremely annoying, since it makes incremental searching for
> single-quoted strings much harder.
> 
> I apropos'ed the "Info-" variables and grepped the list for "quot",
> "unicode" and "single", all to no avail, and ran out of ideas.  Is this
> behavior customizable?  How to get back to ASCII quotes?

Oh boy, you'll have fun reading about this in the bug threads:

#16292 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=16292
         info docs now contain single straight quotes instead of `'

#13131 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13131
         Allow curly quotes to be found by searching for straight quotes?

#16439 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=16439
         Highlighting of strings within Info buffers

#13228 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13228
         Request for highlighting back-quote/quote pair notation

Enjoy!

(Info+ can at least help by highlighting quoted names etc.
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InfoPlus)

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-01-24, at 00:53, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:

>> I'm not sure about it, but it seems that after upgrading from 24.3 to
>> 25.0.50.1, the Info buffer is a bit uglified.  First, it uses some face
>> I don't like for variable and function names – but if this annoys me too
>> much, I can change it easily.  Worse, instead of e.g. `t' it now says
>> ‘t’, for instance (i.e., it uses Unicode single quotation marks).
>> 
>> This is extremely annoying, since it makes incremental searching for
>> single-quoted strings much harder.
>> 
>> I apropos'ed the "Info-" variables and grepped the list for "quot",
>> "unicode" and "single", all to no avail, and ran out of ideas.  Is this
>> behavior customizable?  How to get back to ASCII quotes?
>
> Oh boy, you'll have fun reading about this in the bug threads:
>
> #16292 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=16292
>          info docs now contain single straight quotes instead of `'
>
> #13131 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13131
>          Allow curly quotes to be found by searching for straight quotes?
>
> #16439 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=16439
>          Highlighting of strings within Info buffers
>
> #13228 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13228
>          Request for highlighting back-quote/quote pair notation
>
> Enjoy!

Thanks, I'll look at these.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>
> Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:17:47 +0100
> 
> I'm not sure about it, but it seems that after upgrading from 24.3 to
> 25.0.50.1, the Info buffer is a bit uglified.  First, it uses some face
> I don't like for variable and function names

Not sure what you mean here, because there is no such face in Info.
Maybe you mean Info-quoted, which is used for quoted strings?  (You
can use "M-x describe-text-properties" to show the face at point.)

> Worse, instead of e.g. `t' it now says ‘t’, for instance (i.e., it
> uses Unicode single quotation marks).

I don't think this has anything to do with Emacs.  These characters
come from the Info file itself, and are produced by the new 'makeinfo'
command.  That's "progress" for you: many people nowadays no longer
want to see ASCII quotes, they want to see those fancy characters
Unicode introduced.

Or maybe the reason is that in Emacs 24 we actively prevent 'makeinfo'
from doing that, whereas in Emacs 25 we don't.

> This is extremely annoying, since it makes incremental searching for
> single-quoted strings much harder.

Doesn't M-C-s allow you to find that by a suitable regexp?

Anyway, we should revive bug #13131, and provide an easier solution
for this particular issue.

> How to get back to ASCII quotes?

I think you need to regenerate the Info docs, using the levers we did
in Emacs 24 to disallow Unicode quotes.  Or customize 'makeinfo' to
produce ASCII characters instead (search for OPEN_QUOTE_SYMBOL in the
Texinfo manual), and then regenerate the docs.  Or install an older
'makeinfo', which didn't produce these quotes, and then regenerate the
docs.

RE: Single quotes in Info

[Drew Adams]

> Anyway, we should revive bug #13131, and provide an easier solution
> for this particular issue.

I agree.  For this particular (search) issue.

This is conceptually related to, but it need not necessarily be
extended to, discussion about being able to Isearch abstracting from
diacritical marks etc.  (E.g. bug #13041:
http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13041.)

IOW, being able to easily specify equivalence classes of chars for
search (and other) purposes, and preferably being able to quickly
choose whether to make use of them (this one or that one) - e.g.,
as we can do now for case-sensitivity (`a' ~ `A').

The easily-search-for-curly-or-not-curly problem reminds us that
Info is not only about display: One needs to be able to easily
search for (and perhaps even type directly) the chars that are
displayed.  Chars ` and ' correspond to keys on most keyboards.
‘ and ’ do not.

Some of those who propose curly-quote etc. display as a "modernization"
of Emacs might not take sufficiently into account how Emacs users
interact with the text.  "Modern" appearance is nice (even important),
but Emacs is not *only* about display.

> > How to get back to ASCII quotes?
> 
> I think you need to regenerate the Info docs, using the levers we did
> in Emacs 24 to disallow Unicode quotes.  Or customize 'makeinfo' to
> produce ASCII characters instead (search for OPEN_QUOTE_SYMBOL in the
> Texinfo manual), and then regenerate the docs.  Or install an older
> 'makeinfo', which didn't produce these quotes, and then regenerate the
> docs.

As I know you are aware, Eli, this return-to-the-source is not a real
solution.  (Ideally) Emacs users themselves should be able (somehow)
to choose which chars are used for such display.  Remaking Info should
not be our only (i.e., final) answer, even if it is such today.

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 07:11:05 -0800 (PST)
> From: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> 
> > > How to get back to ASCII quotes?
> > 
> > I think you need to regenerate the Info docs, using the levers we did
> > in Emacs 24 to disallow Unicode quotes.  Or customize 'makeinfo' to
> > produce ASCII characters instead (search for OPEN_QUOTE_SYMBOL in the
> > Texinfo manual), and then regenerate the docs.  Or install an older
> > 'makeinfo', which didn't produce these quotes, and then regenerate the
> > docs.
> 
> As I know you are aware, Eli, this return-to-the-source is not a real
> solution.

I was enumerating solutions that are available to the OP now.  This
list is about helping users do whatever they want, not about telling
Emacs developers what future features they should work on ;-)

RE: Single quotes in Info

[Drew Adams]

> > As I know you are aware, Eli, this return-to-the-source is not a
> > real solution.  (Ideally) Emacs users themselves should be able
> > (somehow) to choose which chars are used for such display.
> > Remaking Info should not be our only (i.e., final) answer, even
> > if it is such today.
> 
> I was enumerating solutions that are available to the OP now.  This
> list is about helping users do whatever they want, not about telling
> Emacs developers what future features they should work on ;-)

My message was an endorsement reply to your own development-oriented
statement:

 ez> Anyway, we should revive bug #13131, and provide an easier
 ez> solution for this particular issue.

And I think it does not hurt users to be reminded that curly
quotes are not as easy to type as straight quotes (with many/most
keyboards), and that Info is about things like search and not
only about display.  Thanks to Marcin for reminding us all.

It is perfectly legitimate to discuss possible new features on
this list, as well as current limitations & possible workarounds.

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-01-24, at 16:54, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:

> And I think it does not hurt users to be reminded that curly
> quotes are not as easy to type as straight quotes (with many/most
> keyboards), and that Info is about things like search and not
> only about display.  Thanks to Marcin for reminding us all.

You're welcome.

BTW, I love the Info system.  Only recently I learned to use its index
(and not only isearch), and it's even better with that.

My particular use case was with the info page on interactive codes.
I wanted to search for the string "`p'", and I could enter curly quotes
using M-e and editing the search query with some unicode-aware things
(C-x 8 RET, for instance), but this is a nuisance.  (Also, in my case,
isearch-forward-regexp wouldn't help.)

Please note that I do appreciate typographical niceties like proper
quotes and such.  In this case, however, usability is more important
than aesthetics imho.

> It is perfectly legitimate to discuss possible new features on
> this list, as well as current limitations & possible workarounds.

That's good to know! :-)

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-01-24, at 16:11, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:

> This is conceptually related to, but it need not necessarily be
> extended to, discussion about being able to Isearch abstracting from
> diacritical marks etc.  (E.g. bug #13041:
> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13041.)
>
> IOW, being able to easily specify equivalence classes of chars for
> search (and other) purposes, and preferably being able to quickly
> choose whether to make use of them (this one or that one) - e.g.,
> as we can do now for case-sensitivity (`a' ~ `A').

This is a great idea.  Maybe even not only for isearch.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Artur Malabarba]

2015-01-24 15:00 GMT-02:00 Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>:
>
> On 2015-01-24, at 16:11, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:
>
>> This is conceptually related to, but it need not necessarily be
>> extended to, discussion about being able to Isearch abstracting from
>> diacritical marks etc.  (E.g. bug #13041:
>> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13041.)
>>
>> IOW, being able to easily specify equivalence classes of chars for
>> search (and other) purposes, and preferably being able to quickly
>> choose whether to make use of them (this one or that one) - e.g.,
>> as we can do now for case-sensitivity (`a' ~ `A').
>
> This is a great idea.  Maybe even not only for isearch.
>

I also really like this idea, so much so that I've gone ahead and
implemented it. It is implemented on the branch
`scratch/isearch-character-group-folding'. I called it group-folding,
but we can call it class folding or whatever sounds more intuitive to
most people.

The implementation is very much up for debate. Currently, what it does
is use regexps (behind the scenes) so that a plain double quote
matches all those unicode double quotes, and the same for a hard
single quote. The way it is written, it is trivial to add more groups
by adding entries to `isearch-groups-alist'.
Of course, other characters are appropriately regexp-quoted behind the
scenes, so that everything else works as expected. The surface is
exactly like regular isearch, except for these two characters.

The set of groups is defined by `isearch-groups-alist', and the
folding only happens if `isearch-fold-groups' is non-nil.
Other groups that maybe should be added are latin accented letters.

Cheers to all,

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Stefan Monnier]

> The implementation is very much up for debate. Currently, what it does
> is use regexps (behind the scenes) so that a plain double quote
> matches all those unicode double quotes, and the same for a hard
> single quote.

Why not use the case-fold machinery instead?


        Stefan

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>,  emacs-devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>,  Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,  help-gnu-emacs <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 12:37:31 -0500
> 
> > The implementation is very much up for debate. Currently, what it does
> > is use regexps (behind the scenes) so that a plain double quote
> > matches all those unicode double quotes, and the same for a hard
> > single quote.
> 
> Why not use the case-fold machinery instead?

That will work only for character-for-character replacements, won't
it?

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Why not use the case-fold machinery instead?
> That will work only for character-for-character replacements, won't
> it?

That's right.  But it will work a lot more efficiently (and reliably,
e.g. if you have a one of those characters in a character-range) for those.


        Stefan

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Artur Malabarba]

2015-01-27 15:37 GMT-02:00 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>:
>> The implementation is very much up for debate. Currently, what it does
>> is use regexps (behind the scenes) so that a plain double quote
>> matches all those unicode double quotes, and the same for a hard
>> single quote.
>
> Why not use the case-fold machinery instead?

Because, IIUC, this is done in c code. While I know c, I can't say I
know Emacs' c. So that implementation will take longer (something on
the order of weeks).

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Why not use the case-fold machinery instead?
> Because, IIUC, this is done in c code. While I know c, I can't say I
> know Emacs' c. So that implementation will take longer (something on
> the order of weeks).

It's configured in C, tho.  Try:

   C-h f *case-table TAB

for a start.


        Stefan

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Stefan Monnier]

> It's configured in C, tho.  Try:
                    ^^^
                   Elisp
Duh!


        Stefan

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Artur Malabarba]

Ok, I'll be getting on a 10 hour flight now, so I'll be looking into
the case-fold machinery.
I did have a brief look already and it doesn't seem horribly absurd.

Any other pointers that might be useful before I jump into no-internet land? :-)

2015-01-28 1:48 GMT-02:00 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>:
>> It's configured in C, tho.  Try:
>                     ^^^
>                    Elisp
> Duh!
>
>
>         Stefan

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Stefan Monnier]

> Ok, I'll be getting on a 10 hour flight now, so I'll be looking into
> the case-fold machinery.
> I did have a brief look already and it doesn't seem horribly absurd.

> Any other pointers that might be useful before I jump into no-internet
>  land? :-)

Just a warning: the case-tables are threatened.  They should be replaced by
Unicode-aware (locale-dependent?) case folding for the 99.99% of the
cases, the only remaining case is the "ASCII upcase/downcase" operation
used in sendmail.el (IIRC), which we can hopefully solve some other way.


        Stefan

Re: Single quotes in Info

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 14:27:45 -0200
> From: Artur Malabarba <bruce.connor.am@gmail.com>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, help-gnu-emacs <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
> 
> I also really like this idea, so much so that I've gone ahead and
> implemented it. It is implemented on the branch
> `scratch/isearch-character-group-folding'. I called it group-folding,
> but we can call it class folding or whatever sounds more intuitive to
> most people.

I didn't yet have time to look at the source, so apologies if what's
below is off the mark.

> The implementation is very much up for debate. Currently, what it does
> is use regexps (behind the scenes) so that a plain double quote
> matches all those unicode double quotes, and the same for a hard
> single quote. The way it is written, it is trivial to add more groups
> by adding entries to `isearch-groups-alist'.
> Of course, other characters are appropriately regexp-quoted behind the
> scenes, so that everything else works as expected. The surface is
> exactly like regular isearch, except for these two characters.

If this is implemented in isearch, then IMO doing it for quotes alone
makes very little sense.  It would make a lot of sense if it were
implemented in info.el, for searching Info manuals (in which case it
should also support the other Unicode characters produced by makeinfo
that have ASCII equivalents, like ⇒ vs =>.  (Note that this is not
character-for-character equivalence anymore.)

For a general-purpose search feature, we'd need a much more
general-purpose and versatile implementation.

> The set of groups is defined by `isearch-groups-alist', and the
> folding only happens if `isearch-fold-groups' is non-nil.
> Other groups that maybe should be added are latin accented letters.

If we do this via our private database, that database is going to be
huge.  I suggest to explore an alternative implementation, which uses
canonical equivalence.  We already have infrastructure for that, see
the description of the 'decomposition' character property in the ELisp
manual.

Unicode in emacs (was Single quotes in Info)

[Rusi]

On Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 5:23:46 AM UTC+5:30, Drew Adams wrote:
> > I'm not sure about it, but it seems that after upgrading from 24.3 to
> > 25.0.50.1, the Info buffer is a bit uglified.  First, it uses some face
> > I don't like for variable and function names - but if this annoys me too
> > much, I can change it easily.  Worse, instead of e.g. `t' it now says
> > 't', for instance (i.e., it uses Unicode single quotation marks).
> > 
> > This is extremely annoying, since it makes incremental searching for
> > single-quoted strings much harder.
> > 
> > I apropos'ed the "Info-" variables and grepped the list for "quot",
> > "unicode" and "single", all to no avail, and ran out of ideas.  Is this
> > behavior customizable?  How to get back to ASCII quotes?
> 
> Oh boy, you'll have fun reading about this in the bug threads:
> 
> #16292 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=16292
>          info docs now contain single straight quotes instead of `'
> 
> #13131 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13131
>          Allow curly quotes to be found by searching for straight quotes?
> 
> #16439 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=16439
>          Highlighting of strings within Info buffers
> 
> #13228 - http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13228
>          Request for highlighting back-quote/quote pair notation
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> (Info+ can at least help by highlighting quoted names etc.
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InfoPlus)

Just some (very laymanish) thoughts about unicode.
Uni-code has two aspects:
1. Uni-fying the tower of babel that is human languages
2. Uni-versality of a common core

Historically, the 1st is the driver why unicode caught on at all
[The world is a bit larger than the two sides of the atlantic!]

However the 2nd probably holds more hope for reducing babel-ish bedlam.

Some of the more universal sides of unicode:
1. ASCII (for historical reasons alone)
2. Math
3. Typography  (which this thread is about)

[Note this will not technically hold up. I am talking more sociologically
ie
"2+3" is more likely to universalize than "Add two and three"
]

Further expanded in this post
http://blog.languager.org/2015/01/unicode-and-universe.html

Also a plea for programming languages to start getting more unicoded
[Not to be taken too seriously - just a possible direction]
http://blog.languager.org/2014/04/unicoded-python.html