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: `C-b' is backward-char, `left' is left-char - why? Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 11:00:58 +0300 Message-ID: <83lixrb6f9.fsf@gnu.org> References: <6F4054004B154CFB8E2753172D316C13@us.oracle.com> <83tycfc0l0.fsf@gnu.org> <392401A7079D400E86B791262598387D@us.oracle.com> <87boynkcjp.fsf@gmail.com> <32C1BA101EF548F9ACEA6E496DD8019E@us.oracle.com> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1306569667 29464 80.91.229.12 (28 May 2011 08:01:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 08:01:07 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, antoine.levitt@gmail.com To: Drew Adams Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat May 28 10:01:03 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1QQESE-0005C8-NE for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 28 May 2011 10:01:02 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60315 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QQESD-0001Dn-Pa for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 28 May 2011 04:01:01 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:46483) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QQESA-0001DS-OF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 28 May 2011 04:00:59 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QQES9-0003Zo-Fl for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 28 May 2011 04:00:58 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout22.012.net.il ([80.179.55.172]:45110) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QQES9-0003Ze-7y for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 28 May 2011 04:00:57 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout22.012.net.il by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0LLW00100BH7NY00@a-mtaout22.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 28 May 2011 11:00:55 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([77.126.221.158]) by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0LLW000PFBLHMUA0@a-mtaout22.012.net.il>; Sat, 28 May 2011 11:00:54 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: <32C1BA101EF548F9ACEA6E496DD8019E@us.oracle.com> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 (beta) X-Received-From: 80.179.55.172 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:139820 Archived-At: > From: "Drew Adams" > Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 16:19:16 -0700 > > > why do you need "C-f" and "right" to be the same thing? > > I don't. Why do we need them to be different, by default? > > That's the question I posed (`C-b' and `left', actually). Btw, the same "problem" exists with `M-f'/`M-b' and `C-'/`C-' as well. We even discussed the possibility to make `' and `' behaving differently, see https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-06/msg00163.html and the responses. > Haven't seen an answer yet, except that bidi needs them to be different. A simple answer is that I didn't see any other solution that is simpler or more elegant than this one. If you can suggest one, please do. Others explained (and I concur) that a minor mode is neither simpler nor more elegant (more about that below). If you (or someone else, for that matter) have better suggestions, let's hear them. > The question then is why bidi's-need-for-this needs to become > Emacs's-need-in-general (all the time, everywhere, for everyone)? Because experience shows that making such deep, central features optional means trouble in more than one way. For starters -- and this was also mentioned in this thread -- it will make the bidi features less reliable because many active contributors will opt not to use it (e.g., because disabling it makes redisplay faster). We've been through that once, when support for multibyte characters, a.k.a. MULE, was introduced in Emacs 20. I was there when it happened. If someone wants to put the Emacs community through this again, I certainly don't, and I'm happy that Stefan and Chong agree. Given this, you will understand that it is no incident that bidi-display-reordering is not a user option. If it's up to me, it never will be. Another reason is that once Emacs moved to be based on Unicode, it needs to strive to support the requirements of the Unicode Standard as much as possible, because users of word-processing programs come more and more to expect that. We already support various parts of that standard, and we do it by default without any options and knobs. The Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm is part of that; that its support needs significant changes in the Emacs infrastructure is a minor detail, from the user perspective. If OpenOffice and Firefox support it by default (and I don't think you can disable it there), users will expect Emacs to do the same. > I mentioned `substitute-key-definition' and `remap'. These are indeed valid considerations, but a minor mode is not the solution, because the same problems will exist when that minor mode is in effect. Surely, you don't want to suggest that we should forget about bidi users when we consider the difficulties with `remap' and `substitute-key-definition'? So if we don't want these consequences, we should come up with a solution that works when bidi is in effect as well. If you can suggest such a solution, please do, but a minor mode isn't it.