Re: Unicode confusables and reordering characters considered harmful, a simple solution

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>
> Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2021 20:52:21 -0700
> Cc: cpitclaudel@gmail.com, yuri.v.khan@gmail.com, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, 
> 	emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> In any case, the above leads me back to the simple idea to raise
> byte-compiler (or even `read'?) warnings for the problematic control
> characters unless a specific variable is set to t, or unless the piece
> of code using them is wrapped in some `with-suppressed-warnings' call.

That would flag our own code, because we sometimes wrap strings in
these directional format control characters, to avoid confusing
display.  Those are exactly the valid uses of these characters, ones
against which it makes no sense to issue a warning.

> Or we do it the other way around: users mark a source code file to say
> that "this file will never contain RTL characters" (but RTL scripts in
> ELisp code is pretty uncommon, I think).

So now everyone is suspect unless certified otherwise?  How does this
make sense?

> > Instead I think that Emacs should adopt a similar fast
> > strategy. Anything we do today can be refined later.
> 
> FWIW, I tend to agree with this.

I don't.  FWIW, I should probably say, because it seems my opinions in
these matters aren't worth much here, the years I spent studying them
and coding for them in Emacs notwithstanding.