Re: ChangeLog fontifications

["Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org>
> Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 17:14:16 +0200
> 
> Yes, all GNU projects I work on use the style with a 15-year tradition.

What projects are those?

> After people have used to write things in a certain style for 10 years -
> following the example that was given by you, by GCC, glibc and other
> projects - it will be hard to explain what in this style is "wrong".

Actually, I found it rather easy to explain, in those cases where I
did.

And many code contributors write misformatted ChangeLog entries even
according to old conventions you are accustomed to.  So if a project
cares about its log formatting, maintainers typically need to watch
out for badly formatted entries anyway.  So it's not like the old
conventions are somehow automatically followed, except by those few
who are accustomed to them.

> I add that the new Emacs style is bad because it doesn't allow a newline
> to be inserted anywhere, i.e. it doesn't treat newline and space conceptually
> the same.

With suggested changes that will allow log entries to be correctly
formatted when they are refilled, this problem will go away, I think.

> What are the advantages/benefits of the new Emacs style that should
> convince me and others to use it?

The advantages/benefits were already mentioned in this thread: the new
style makes it easier for line-oriented programs to find the names of
changed functions/macros.