Re: ASCII-only startup message?

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

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 613 bytes --]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> The ugliness argument was about the grave accent, `, not about the
> apostrophe.

Although the ugliness argument is primarily about the grave accent, it is also 
about the apostrophe. With most fonts “There’s” looks nicer than “There's”, and 
it’s better typography in English. Either character will do, but there seems 
little point uglifying the former into the latter.

To try to avoid spending more of our time about whether to use straight or 
curved apostrophes, I reworded the commentary to omit the apostrophes. I 
tightened it up a bit while I was at it.

[-- Attachment #2: 0001-Reword-initial-scratch-for-brevity-appearance.patch --]
[-- Type: text/x-diff, Size: 1193 bytes --]

From c82f117c22d1f88f35166cdb7d58c2ca02b1127f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2015 15:22:28 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] Reword initial *scratch* for brevity, appearance

* lisp/startup.el (initial-scratch-message):
Reword to avoid apostrophes, and to make it shorter.
See the thread starting in:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-12/msg01241.html
---
 lisp/startup.el | 5 ++---
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/lisp/startup.el b/lisp/startup.el
index 0e36d35..20f25a8 100644
--- a/lisp/startup.el
+++ b/lisp/startup.el
@@ -1430,9 +1430,8 @@ x-apply-session-resources
       (put 'cursor 'face-modified t))))
 
 (defcustom initial-scratch-message (purecopy "\
-;; This buffer is for notes you don\\='t want to save, and for Lisp evaluation.
-;; If you want to create a file, visit that file with \\[find-file],
-;; then enter the text in that file\\='s own buffer.
+;; This buffer is for text that is not saved, and for Lisp evaluation.
+;; To create a file, visit it with \\[find-file] and enter text in its buffer.
 
 ")
   "Initial documentation displayed in *scratch* buffer at startup.
-- 
2.5.0