Dmitry Gutov wrote:

>> It's a bit more complicated and it would not
>> address all the uses of curved quotes in diagnostics, but it would
>> address many of them.
>
> The other uses, which currently don't employ a formatting sequence, can be
> changed to use %qs as well. It'll just be less of a mechanical conversion.

Do you mean replacing this sort of thing:

   (message "Press ‘?’ or ‘h’ for help, ‘q’ to quit")

with this?

   (message "Press %qs or %qs for help, %qs to quit" "?" "h" "q")

If so, this doesn't sound like a good idea, as it would make the code harder to 
read.  Also, it wouldn't suffice for code like this:

     (insert (symbol-name type)
             (format " is a type (of kind ‘"))
     (help-insert-xref-button (symbol-name metatype)
                              'cl-help-type metatype)
     (insert (format "’)"))

which formats the matching quotes separately.  Of course in general one could 
rewrite even the latter example to use %qs (if only to grab the quote characters 
out of the result string and reuse them individually!) but the rewritten version 
would be significantly harder to read and maintain.

As we need to support formatting individual curved quotes anyway, there is an 
argument for keeping it simple and omitting the attached patch for paired 
quotes.  With all this in mind, do you still think the complexity of the 
attached draft patch is a good idea?