From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Dmitry Gutov Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Upcoming loss of usability of Emacs source files and Emacs. Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2015 14:40:50 +0300 Message-ID: <558945C2.2010203@yandex.ru> References: <557F3C22.4060909@cs.ucla.edu> <5580D356.4050708@cs.ucla.edu> <87si9qonxb.fsf@gnu.org> <5581C29E.1030101@yandex.ru> <87r3p9fxm2.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87k2v0fiji.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <20150619090225.GA2743@acm.fritz.box> <87fv5kfrfa.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <83twtzhi9g.fsf@gnu.org> <877fqvfvby.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <83fv5jh8ls.fsf@gnu.org> <874mlzf71d.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> 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 1435059718 9631 80.91.229.3 (23 Jun 2015 11:41:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2015 11:41:58 +0000 (UTC) Cc: acm@muc.de, eggert@cs.ucla.edu, rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: "Stephen J. Turnbull" , Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Jun 23 13:41:43 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 1Z7MaF-0004T9-1U for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 23 Jun 2015 13:41:43 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:44688 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z7MaE-0000Z3-86 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 23 Jun 2015 07:41:42 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:45608) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z7MZz-0000Yv-QY for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 23 Jun 2015 07:41:28 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z7MZu-0004JK-Q3 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 23 Jun 2015 07:41:27 -0400 Original-Received: from mail-wi0-x232.google.com ([2a00:1450:400c:c05::232]:36030) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z7MZu-00047G-JZ; Tue, 23 Jun 2015 07:41:22 -0400 Original-Received: by wicnd19 with SMTP id nd19so103366664wic.1; Tue, 23 Jun 2015 04:40:53 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=sender:subject:to:references:cc:from:message-id:date:user-agent :mime-version:in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=6NtP40DjQiZEVkkeKCyWpLWxVHh3/eO1EQT6U6OEmLY=; b=Yh8caUnV3RiTFV+ftRNnQ5It+EMxkJMZSMJ2GAXYW4pkm0makMLz2S3tPwhCJMCuhJ bBbt/kLSeAcwDF+1bQSN8oO5IejZbk+3jue9G8kSywSucIosLw/X0XnIADlU1TeKqReo eSSoScjBMR0slbjT2e2ufTO5EFQxB/EjPmwVUK3VyVIyYw1RSRWsjonyQySa0eGdlX0+ 7xom1CujsTal6a80zmXRYPvI1/iU+BsG5biyM+V4dvahpTeqkwxOb00w/bSJ/qPVOaYA CTdk/BMS4QUWJ59GzO+I0IzLHuBfxdQASI7jrXu/LszwkLv16wWfdj9lUqDg0+Q/u6su OnUw== X-Received: by 10.194.179.200 with SMTP id di8mr60985558wjc.56.1435059653792; Tue, 23 Jun 2015 04:40:53 -0700 (PDT) Original-Received: from [192.168.1.2] ([82.102.93.54]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPSA id lu5sm35222751wjb.9.2015.06.23.04.40.52 (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Tue, 23 Jun 2015 04:40:53 -0700 (PDT) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.0 In-Reply-To: <874mlzf71d.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Error: Malformed IPv6 address (bad octet value). X-Received-From: 2a00:1450:400c:c05::232 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:187406 Archived-At: On 06/23/2015 06:16 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > It's also true that I've expressed an *opinion* that the costs to a > relative few are small compared to potential benefits for many. > Obviously, the opponents disagree about the balance. When opinions > differ, shouldn't we go get some actual facts? Someone should also clearly state the benefits, and to what they are attributed. There's not too much value in having curly quotes appear directly in the source file. Maybe they'll appeal to aesthetics of some subset of Elisp programmers, whereas a lot of others will just be surprised. We could also reach the same effect with font-lock, with extra flexibility, and without the need to change the substitute-command-keys API (and support it forever thereafter). As Andreas mentioned before, not every native English speaker is accustomed to them, and certainly not most of the people for whom English is not a native language. > Of course it's possible to go too far. What's the appropriate > balance? I don't know. I think *this* experiment is a very > conservative one. Try it and see, *then* oppose the feature if > appropriate. If that works (that is, provides useful information > leading to consensus, which might be to keep or to revert the > feature), more progressive experiments may be justified. Anyone interested in "trying" it can check out the current Emacs sources and type curly quotes in docstrings to their heart's content. There's not much to see or evaluate there. > [2] Emacs is an organization of professionals, even if it can't > afford to pay them market rates. And it certainly can't afford to pay > HCI experts. It just has its reasons for avoiding the experiments > needed to get good information about usability of UI changes, and so > falls back on "logical thought about the changes". Disclaimer: I > believe that those reasons are valid, but they are weaker today than > ever before, and the conservatism should be relaxed. It would take quite a bit of conceit to assume that Emacs can make better choices WRT to docstring markup syntax than virtually every programming language and documentation format out there. We're not even competing with other editors here.