From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Paul Eggert Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Upcoming loss of usability of Emacs source files and Emacs. Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2015 23:02:48 -0700 Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Message-ID: <55850208.3080605@cs.ucla.edu> References: <20150615142237.GA3517@acm.fritz.box> <87y4jkhqh5.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <557F3C22.4060909@cs.ucla.edu> <5580D356.4050708@cs.ucla.edu> <87si9qonxb.fsf@gnu.org> <55826DCC.9040404@cs.ucla.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1434780199 14561 80.91.229.3 (20 Jun 2015 06:03:19 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2015 06:03:19 +0000 (UTC) Cc: acm@muc.de, stephen@xemacs.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, tsdh@gnu.org To: rms@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jun 20 08:03:10 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 1Z6Brw-000715-VI for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 20 Jun 2015 08:03:09 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60784 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z6Brv-0004Hf-QI for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 20 Jun 2015 02:03:07 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:38640) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z6Bri-0004Dh-UC for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 20 Jun 2015 02:02:56 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z6Bre-0005yM-Sk for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 20 Jun 2015 02:02:54 -0400 Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([131.179.128.68]:59812) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z6Bre-0005yG-N1; Sat, 20 Jun 2015 02:02:50 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C29C1607F2; Fri, 19 Jun 2015 23:02:49 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10032) with ESMTP id 2PPIxERbgjIq; Fri, 19 Jun 2015 23:02:48 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 81D3F16080F; Fri, 19 Jun 2015 23:02:48 -0700 (PDT) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at zimbra.cs.ucla.edu Original-Received: from zimbra.cs.ucla.edu ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (zimbra.cs.ucla.edu [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10026) with ESMTP id 60HG96dAM7ja; Fri, 19 Jun 2015 23:02:48 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from [192.168.1.9] (pool-100-32-155-148.lsanca.fios.verizon.net [100.32.155.148]) by zimbra.cs.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 53E561607F2; Fri, 19 Jun 2015 23:02:48 -0700 (PDT) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.7.0 In-Reply-To: X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 131.179.128.68 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:187336 Archived-At: Richard Stallman wrote: > Will it be enabled by default in Emacs Lisp mode? I'd prefer that, yes. I suggested doing this for Emacs developers first, in the master branch. Eli thought this too eager, so I did not install it. Perhaps we should revisit this at some point. In the meantime I've put the following into my ~/.emacs startup file: (if (fboundp 'electric-quote-mode) (electric-quote-mode)) and this does enable electric quoting in Emacs Lisp mode. > What practical advantage justifies this complexity? There are practical advantages to a quoting style that can't easily be confused with ordinary Lisp code involving ' and `. We've already done this in the Emacs manuals' Info files, and the idea is to extend this to *Help* buffers (already done in the master branch) and to diagnostics (not yet done). This will provide a more consistent interface within Emacs. Also, quoting with single quotes is easier for most non-experts to read. Emacs's traditional style of quoting with grave accent and apostrophe is idiosyncratic and is offputting for many new users; it used to work well in displays long ago and it was reasonably common in GNU applications, but that's no longer true and now it's one more thing to learn when using Emacs. I have some interest and experience in this, as my assistants and I introduce Emacs to an average of about one new user per day. It would be better for Emacs to use a quoting style similar to what people are accustomed to, so that they are not distracted by it.