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: [Emacs-diffs] master 9ce1d38: Use curved quotes in core elisp diagnostics Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2015 19:42:53 +0000 Message-ID: <20150818194253.GE2262@acm.fritz.box> References: <20150816160149.9416.80132@vcs.savannah.gnu.org> <55D1043C.3030909@yandex.ru> <20150816225346.GA5367@acm.fritz.box> <55D2C080.2000806@cs.ucla.edu> <87wpwt5619.fsf@gnu.org> <55D36CB5.10803@cs.ucla.edu> <878u9879q9.fsf@igel.home> <19BD5D76-06A0-4FC0-A46F-760B2C27D321@gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1439926951 24383 80.91.229.3 (18 Aug 2015 19:42:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2015 19:42:31 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel To: Chad Brown Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Aug 18 21:42:17 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZRmlz-0006xm-UL for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 18 Aug 2015 21:42:16 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:59300 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZRmlz-0001MS-Cb for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:42:15 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:49335) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZRmlk-0001G8-Mo for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:42:01 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZRmlf-0004Dq-NU for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:42:00 -0400 Original-Received: from mail.muc.de ([193.149.48.3]:47394) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZRmlf-0004D4-Eo for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:41:55 -0400 Original-Received: (qmail 6922 invoked by uid 3782); 18 Aug 2015 19:41:53 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (p548A50C2.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [84.138.80.194]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Tue, 18 Aug 2015 21:41:53 +0200 Original-Received: (qmail 15937 invoked by uid 1000); 18 Aug 2015 19:42:53 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <19BD5D76-06A0-4FC0-A46F-760B2C27D321@gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: FreeBSD 9.x X-Received-From: 193.149.48.3 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:188905 Archived-At: Hello, Chad. On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 11:32:36AM -0700, Chad Brown wrote: > > On 18 Aug 2015, at 11:05, Andreas Schwab wrote: > > > > Paul Eggert writes: > > > >> And here we are in 2015, with the quote problem still only partly fixed. > > > > In 2015, people use `...`. > I work more in prose now than in code, and I’ve received numerous > complaints from editors in the last ~3 years about text that uses > that. In practice, its currently hard for me to type that exact > string, because all of the programs I use that aren’t Emacs or some > of the terminal console interfaces automatically turn it into ‘…’. Yet, for lots of programming languages, it is essential to be able to type `, ', and even .... (That's three dots followed by a full stop!) > I’ve mostly given up on using Emacs for long-form prose work for > this reason (which is too bad, because the editing support for prose > is still quite good, and also long-since pushed down into muscle > memory). It seems what you're missing in Emacs is some sort of "literary mode" which would make the translations you need. When you say "still quite good", this gives the impression of a steady diminution of quality, which hasn't yet dropped below some sort of threshold. Is this what you actually mean? > With all this in mind, I’ve been watching these exploding threads with > a mixture of hope and dread, because the modernization effort would be > very nice for me, but I’m seeing a lot of older people whose opinions > and efforts I respect argue for "just use old-style ascii quotes." I think you may have misunderstood what the controversy is about. It's not about adding or not adding support for curly quotes and curly ellipses in users' documents. It's about whether or not to replace ` and ' in Emacs's source files' error messages and comments with curly quotes, for a perceived aesthetic benefit, at the cost of making those files more difficult to maintain, particularly in environments which aren't X-windows. > I hope that helps. Thanks again to Paul for trying to push Emacs forward. We're _all_ trying to push Emacs forward. It's just we sometimes don't fully agree what direction forward is. :-) > ~Chad -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).