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: char properties vs char properties: two different meanings Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 22:31:02 +0300 Message-ID: <83mwnji2a1.fsf@gnu.org> References: Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1378927887 10324 80.91.229.3 (11 Sep 2013 19:31:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 19:31:27 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Drew Adams Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Sep 11 21:31:30 2013 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 1VJq8P-0003pm-1L for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 11 Sep 2013 21:31:29 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:37602 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VJq8O-00023g-Jw for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 11 Sep 2013 15:31:28 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:58738) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VJq8G-00023Z-Ae for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Sep 2013 15:31:25 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VJq89-0000oC-3H for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Sep 2013 15:31:20 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout20.012.net.il ([80.179.55.166]:62487) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VJq88-0000nk-Rf for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Sep 2013 15:31:13 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout20.012.net.il by a-mtaout20.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0MSZ00M007JPRN00@a-mtaout20.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 11 Sep 2013 22:31:06 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([87.69.4.28]) by a-mtaout20.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0MSZ00ME37JUPS20@a-mtaout20.012.net.il>; Wed, 11 Sep 2013 22:31:06 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 X-Received-From: 80.179.55.166 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:163302 Archived-At: > Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 10:18:42 -0700 (PDT) > From: Drew Adams > > Not sure what a good solution might be, but we have a terminology problem: > there are two completely different notions of "character property" used > in Emacs Lisp: > > 1. A character property is either a text property or an overlay property. > It is what function `get-char-property' returns. It is good to have > a term that covers both. I use it in doc for functions I have that > act on either, for instance. > > 2. A character property is a named attribute of a character... > See (elisp) `Character Properties'. No, we have only 1 "character property": the second one you mention. The first one lives in function names and is called "char-property". This is unfortunate (and has bad mnemonic value, IMO), but that's water under the bridge, because these APIs existed long before Emacs started supporting Unicode. > Is "character code property" accurate? No. There's no property to the "code" of the character. The addition of "code" was a kludge, to work around the fact that char-property was already taken. But please don't confuse API names and terminology. They don't need to be 100% the same. It's good if they are, but it's not a catastrophe if they aren't. Just stop talking about character properties in the first sense in human-readable text, such as doc strings. The manual doesn't use "char property" anywhere.