Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 9ce1d38: Use curved quotes in core elisp diagnostics

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

Richard Stallman wrote:

> The issue at hand is doc strings in the source code, not format strings.

True.  Sorry about the confusion.

> It's a bad practice to copy text from a help buffer into
> a doc string in the source code

That's a bit like saying it's bad practice to copy from a text file into a Lisp 
string.  Although such copying can lead to problems because arbitrary text can 
be misinterpreted in a Lisp string, as a practical matter it's often quite 
convenient to copy snippets of text files into Lisp strings or vice versa, and 
it often works well, either because users know the text doesn't have string 
escapes or delimiters, or because they repair any glitches that may arise.

And it's not just *Help* buffers.  I often cut and paste from documentation into 
code.  The Emacs info files have used curved quotes for some time, and it's 
helpful to have these work in doc strings too.  As a simple example, the Elisp 
manual says this:

  -- Function: eql value1 value2
      This function acts like ‘eq’ except when both arguments are
      numbers.  It compares numbers by type and numeric value,...

If I were to write a similar function I might copy some of this into the new 
function's doc string and then adapt it, like this:

   (defun eqfuzz (value1 value2)
     "Compare two values but use fuzzy comparison on numbers.
   This function acts like ‘eq’ except when both arguments are numbers....

This sort of editing is natural and convenient, and there's no compelling reason 
to prohibit it.