Re: Renaming non-X x_* procedures in xdisp.c (and elsewhere)

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2019 09:41:42 -0700
> 
> Renaming would make the code clearer now, and would benefit those unfamiliar 
> with the code (or at least to this part of the code -- and I put myself in this 
> category as I'm often confused by the non-X x_* names). However, renaming would 
> also make software archaeology more difficult.  When weighing benefit vs cost, 
> it partly depends on how forward-looking we want to be.
> 
> I would favor renaming, though I also see the benefits of leaving things alone.

I don't have strong opinions about this.  Aside of making the
archeology and forensics harder, renaming will get in the way of my
personal acquaintance with the code in xdisp.c and dispnew.c, but that
alone doesn't sound like a reason to object to the change.  It will
probably also require a lot more ugly #ifdef's in the mainline code
(or calling through function pointers, not sure which is worse), and
quite a few changes in the headers to go with that.

The original long-term plan, to remind us, was not just to rename the
functions, but also to extract the common code from them so that we
have only one copy of that.