From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Upcoming loss of usability of Emacs source files and Emacs. Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 19:52:15 +0300 Message-ID: <83lhfkoqww.fsf@gnu.org> References: <20150615142237.GA3517@acm.fritz.box> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1434387195 22173 80.91.229.3 (15 Jun 2015 16:53:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 16:53:15 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Alan Mackenzie Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Jun 15 18:53:08 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Z4XdD-00067Q-N5 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 18:53:07 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:35479 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z4XdC-0008Cn-UG for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 12:53:06 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:49835) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z4Xd9-0008AX-2N for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 12:53:03 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z4Xd5-0005Fn-NW for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 12:53:03 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout23.012.net.il ([80.179.55.175]:45934) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z4Xd5-0005FR-8G for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 12:52:59 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout23.012.net.il by a-mtaout23.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0NPZ00E00VZUXF00@a-mtaout23.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 19:52:29 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([87.69.4.28]) by a-mtaout23.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0NPZ00EPOW7HSA90@a-mtaout23.012.net.il>; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 19:52:29 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: <20150615142237.GA3517@acm.fritz.box> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 X-Received-From: 80.179.55.175 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:187186 Archived-At: > Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 14:22:37 +0000 > From: Alan Mackenzie > > My view is that the curly quotes should not replace 0x60 and 0x27 in our > sources, but that the option to display them as curly quotes should be > made available to those that want it. > > As far as I am aware, there has been no poll to gather and analyse the > views of Emacs developers on these changes, much less one for Emacs > users. This is a Bad Thing. > > What do people think? I think this ship has sailed long ago. E.g., GCC has been spewing UTF-8 encoded quotes at me for several years now, and many Info manuals started using Unicode characters, that show as gibberish on my text terminal, many moons ago. Like you, I don't like these characters very much. The make my life slightly harder. But I like fighting quixotic wars even less. Instead of fighting this wave, we should adapt and move on. And there are ways of adapting: convenient input methods for typing the characters, replacements for displaying them on terminals that cannot show the originals, run Grep from within Emacs if it's inconvenient to type these characters from a terminal and observe the results there, etc. We already have all that, and perhaps will need some more, which we will discover as we move on. The next release of Texinfo, just around the corner, will have a feature where the Info reader will display these characters in a legible form, even if the terminal is not UTF-8 capable. So it's not a catastrophe, just something new to adapt to, and make sure, like we already do, that the degradation on less capable devices is graceful.