From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: Oleh Krehel <ohwoeowho@gmail.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: A simple solution to "Upcoming loss of usability ..."
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2015 20:58:44 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20150625205844.GA6883@acm.fritz.box> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <558C2E25.10303@cs.ucla.edu>
Hello, Paul.
On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 09:36:53AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Oleh Krehel wrote:
> > (font-lock-add-keywords
> > 'emacs-lisp-mode
> > '(("\\(`\\)\\([a-zA-Z-0-9]+\\)\\('\\)"
> The proposed approach would mishandle many cases where the things being quoted
> are not typical Lisp identifiers. E.g.:
> "Press ‘h’ for complete help; press ‘?’ repeatedly for a summary"
> "Make ‘funcall/apply’ form to map SOURCE-ARGLIST to TARGET-ARGLIST...."
> "... Example: ‘(ad-map-arglists '(a &rest args) '(w x y z))’ will return ..."
I think there will be several of these cases rather than many.
> Also, the proposed approach won't easily generalize to diagnostics, which often
> quote non-identifiers like ‘%s’. There's also a UI problem: it would cause
> action-at-a-distance, because typing an apostrophe in one place in the buffer
> would visually alter a part of the line many characters away.
> (Action-at-a-distance is not a fatal objection, but it is better to avoid it
> when possible.)
It's not a problem at all. Font lock does it all the time. For
example, just type in "save-excursion" a letter at a time. Only on
typing the "n" does the whole symbol get fontified.
> Most of the advantages you mention for the proposed approach are also advantages
> of the approach in master. With the current approach, the Emacs sources don't
> need to be changed, ....
they've already been massively changed.
> .... quotes are just as easy to input (in Electric Quote mode), ....
This is an unpleasant workaround. It violates "what you type is what
you get".
> .... terminal and copy-pasting work, and quotes are markup.
Which is true, for certain values of "terminal" and "copy-pasting".
> The main advantage of the proposed approach over the current master is that the
> source code often can still contain grave accent and apostrophe unmodified, even
> though people reading and editing the source code will see curved quotes. To my
> mind this is more a recipe for confusion than anything else -- at least, I
> wouldn't want to inflict it on Emacs newcomers.
The main advantage is that non-working characters, the curly quotes,
would not take a central role in Emacs Lisp source code, together with
all the workarounds of questionable taste that they necessitate. It is
solely these non-working characters which I take exception to, and I
think the same is true of several others objecting to these changes.
How about considering these other approaches, in which non-working
characters would not be proliferated through the strings in our source
code?
--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-06-25 20:58 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 51+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-06-25 14:59 A simple solution to "Upcoming loss of usability ..." Oleh Krehel
2015-06-25 15:37 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-25 16:36 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-25 17:00 ` Oleh Krehel
2015-06-25 20:48 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-25 21:10 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-25 22:15 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-25 22:25 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-25 22:41 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-25 22:52 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-27 15:00 ` raman
2015-06-25 18:32 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-25 22:17 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-25 22:38 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-26 2:35 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-26 12:06 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-27 17:28 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-27 17:53 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-27 21:09 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-28 1:04 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-28 15:20 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-28 20:27 ` Escaping quotes in docstrings, Was: " Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-28 23:29 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-07-01 2:56 ` Paul Eggert
2015-07-02 0:09 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-07-02 6:57 ` Paul Eggert
2015-07-02 9:46 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-07-06 6:12 ` Paul Eggert
2015-07-06 12:07 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-07-06 16:30 ` Paul Eggert
2015-07-06 22:10 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-07-07 7:54 ` Paul Eggert
2015-07-07 8:39 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-08-01 1:36 ` Paul Eggert
2015-08-01 21:05 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-08-02 6:56 ` Paul Eggert
2015-08-02 12:51 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-08-02 15:13 ` Paul Eggert
2015-08-02 18:31 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-08-02 8:49 ` Przemysław Wojnowski
2015-08-02 19:16 ` Drew Adams
2015-06-27 17:57 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-25 23:12 ` João Távora
2015-06-26 7:40 ` Oleh Krehel
2015-06-26 14:54 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-26 15:03 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-25 20:58 ` Alan Mackenzie [this message]
2015-06-25 22:34 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-25 22:40 ` Dmitry Gutov
2015-06-25 22:45 ` Paul Eggert
2015-06-25 22:55 ` Dmitry Gutov
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