From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Inadequate documentation of silly characters on screen. Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:29:34 +0000 Message-ID: <20091119172934.GD1314@muc.de> References: <20091118191258.GA2676@muc.de> <20091119082040.GA1720@muc.de> <874ooq8xay.fsf@wanchan.jasonrumney.net> <20091119141852.GC1720@muc.de> <20091119155848.GB1314@muc.de> <19205.30349.786007.611623@parhasard.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1258652141 13853 80.91.229.12 (19 Nov 2009 17:35:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:35:41 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Jason Rumney , Andreas Schwab , Stefan Monnier , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Aidan Kehoe Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Nov 19 18:35:33 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NBAuq-0000y3-VH for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:35:33 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:37305 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1NBAuq-0004U0-DD for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:35:32 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1NBAkH-0002Pu-U5 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:24:37 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1NBAkD-0002KG-KF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:24:37 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=49715 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1NBAkD-0002Jz-BL for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:24:33 -0500 Original-Received: from colin.muc.de ([193.149.48.1]:4254 helo=mail.muc.de) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NBAkC-0002G1-7g for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:24:32 -0500 Original-Received: (qmail 43559 invoked by uid 3782); 19 Nov 2009 17:24:30 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (pD9E51409.dip.t-dialin.net [217.229.20.9]) by colin2.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:24:29 +0100 Original-Received: (qmail 2956 invoked by uid 1000); 19 Nov 2009 17:29:34 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <19205.30349.786007.611623@parhasard.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.5 (Fettercairn) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: FreeBSD 4.6-4.9 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:117269 Archived-At: On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 04:47:09PM +0000, Aidan Kehoe wrote: > Ar an naoú lá déag de mí na Samhain, scríobh Alan Mackenzie: > > Hi, Stefan, > > On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 10:30:18AM -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote: > > > > The actual character in the string is ñ (#x3f). > > > No: the string does not contain any characters, only bytes, because it's > > > a unibyte string. > > I'm thinking from the lisp viewpoint. The string is a data structure > > I really don't want to have to think about > > the difference between "chars" and "bytes" when I'm hacking lisp. If I > > do, then the abstraction "string" is broken. > For some context on this, that???s how it works in XEmacs; we???ve never had > problems with it, we seem to avoid an entire class of programming errors > that GNU Emacs developers deal with on a regular basis. In XEmacs, characters and integers are distinct types. That causes extra work having to convert between them, both mentally and in writing code. It is not that the GNU Emacs way is wrong, it just has a bug at the moment. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).