Re: Upcoming loss of usability of Emacs source files and Emacs.

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> You could have had a subject like "Supersede ASCII quoting convention in
> doc strings"

That would have been misleading, as the patch did not supersede ASCII quoting. 
ASCII quoting still works, and is still supported.

>> In contrast, you installed commit 52c3946c872c8bd96508f74cdda5cbb90c664306, an
>> equally large change to user behavior, ....
>
> Not really.  I simply made the new behaviour optional

No, your patch changed the default behavior for *Help* buffers.  The new default 
negatively affected the UI, in that it made *Help* buffers sometimes quote one 
way, sometimes another, inconsistently.  And more often than not the help 
buffers quoted with grave accent, which is the style we're changing the default 
away from.  All this was considerably more than just implementing an option.

 > I haven't a clue what "help buffers that use modern styles" means.

I meant help buffers that quote with curved single quotes rather than with grave 
accent and apostrophe.

> the difference between curly and
> ASCII quotes must be quite small in this respect

This thread is about a relatively minor change overall, yes.  Molehills and 
mountains do come to mind.