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

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

>>> 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.
>
> It would not have been misleading.  Your aim is precisely to supersede
> ASCII quoting.

It's true that I'd prefer we adopt a simpler system that uses docstrings largely 
unchanged.  But this approach was objected to vociferously, so the patch in 
question did not implement it.  It would have been misleading to label the patch 
as doing what I'd prefer.  Instead, the patch was labeled to do what it actually 
did, which is what labels are supposed to do.

> The very moment curly quoting starts appearing in source
> files is when ASCII quoting will stop working properly.

No, ASCII quoting still works properly, even though curved quotes are in source 
files now.  There were a few curved quotes even in Emacs 24.5 source files, and 
the sky did not fall.

>>>> 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.
>
> Paul, that's a really objectionable thing for you to do.  You snipped
> the second half of my sentence ", setting the default to "off".",

I had written "you installed commit 52c3946c872c8bd96508f74cdda5cbb90c664306, an 
equally large change to user behavior".  You then objected "Not really.  I 
simply made the new behaviour optional, setting the default to 'off'."  Your 
objection was an attempt to minimize the scope of your change, even though it 
was indeed an equally large change to user behavior.  The "Not really" in your 
objection was misleading.  In hindsight I should have mentioned all this in a 
longer comment, and I should have included more of your quote, and my apologies 
if my attempt to be brief misled anybody.  I hope this further comment has made 
the main thrust more clear.

> The point is, that with this new option, users can chose how they want
> to see quotes,

Yes, there seems to be reasonable agreement that users should have an option to 
see quotes traditionally `like this' or in a curved-quote style ‘like this’. As 
users do have that option in the current master, perhaps we should move on to 
the next topic.