Re: Is Emacs becoming Word?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Greg Novak <novak@ucolick.org> writes:

> * David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>>> Today when I was editing source code and tried to type pi/2 in a
>>> buffer, Emacs replaced it with some special character that appeared
>>> as "1/2" as a single character.
>> Unlikely.  Let me name a few things that might have happened:
>> a) you use Leim (C-\) for input of international characters and the
>> transliteration for ½ is /2.  Leim is not on unless you enable it.  It
>> should be easy to find an input method that suits your bill better.
>> b) you use font-lock-mode in LaTeX and write something like ^2, in
>> which case a subscript 2 appears.  font-lock-mode is not turned on by
>> default.  Even if you turn it on, you can remove the script
>> highlighting.
>
> None of the above?  I've never (intentionally) used Leim, and I didn't
> type C-\ before the /2.

Typing it once in the buffer is sufficient.  Your mode line will then
show a "1" pretty much at the start, and the corresponding tooltip
will explain this is the "latin-1" input encoding.

> I had font-lock-mode on, but wasn't in Latex mode.  I was in Python
> mode, and I typed nothing other than pi/2, which got translated to
> "pi(one_half_as_one_character)"

Again: input encodings don't switch themselves onall by themselves.

> And another thing: when I type " or ', Emacs seems to think that I'm
> trying to input a special character.  If I type 'a, I get an angstrom
> symbol, even though (again) I'm editing python code and I'm just
> trying to type a string that starts with a.

You have the latin-1 input encoding enabled.  This does not happen
automatically.  You can verify this by calling

    emacs -q

and then editing a Python file: that should give you the
out-of-the-box configuration of Emacs (plus site-wide
configurations).  And if you suspect the site-wide configuration, try

    emacs -q -no-site-file

instead.  Again: Emacs is not doing anything by default here.  _You_
or your packager are doing something here.

>>> The other day I was editing Lisp code and found that instead of the
>>> usual paren highlighting, Emacs was highlighting the entire enclosed
>>> expression.
>> I don't get that here.  What did you switch on to get it?
>
> This suddenly appeared after updating software, in this case on an
> OS X machine.  I didn't enable any switch (myself), I just got it.

Again: this is not an Emacs default.  You are likely using some
customization that the one responsible for packaging Emacs thinks a
good idea.

Complain to your packager.

>> But they are rarely on by default.
>
> I'm afraid I have to disagree.  All three of the above issues
> appeared after version upgrades: the first two on a Linux machine,
> the last on an OS X laptop.

They are off by default, really.  The Emacs default is what you get
with

    emacs -q -no-site-file

> Maybe there are 3000 new features, and these are the three that are
> on by default, in which case I guess you'd be right, in principle.

No, really.  Please try out emacs -q -no-site-file.  _That_'s the
state you can complain about to Emacs developers.  All the rest is
somebody else's responsibility.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum