Re: lax matching is not a great default behavior

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2015 13:30:16 -0800 (PST)
> From: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> Cc: per@starback.se, jwiegley@gmail.com, rms@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > > > No, because ignoring accents is just a small part of character
> > > > folding.  Please take a look at character-fold.el for the details.
> > >
> > > Agreed.  And neither is it folding of diacriticals, because there
> > > are also ad hoc foldings (e.g., quote marks).  And there will
> > > likely be more to come.  It is, in fact, a hodge podge of foldings
> > > - pretty much all of the various char foldings provided by Emacs
> > > so far, except for letter case.
> > 
> > Actually, it's not a hodge-podge at all.  Barring any user-level
> > customizations, it can be formally defined (and has been defined
> > elsewhere) what is and what isn't folded.
> 
> Whether it is formally defined or not does not answer the
> question about the name to use for Emacs users.

"Character folding" is the accepted terminology for this, we didn't
invent it.  Likewise "character sequence equivalence".

> > > Why not leave it off by default, for now?
> > 
> > "Why not" is not a compelling argument, sorry.  It cannot
> > win the "why not" argument in the other direction.
> 
> "Why change the default?" is precisely the question Emacs
> dev generally asks itself.

We are not changing the default.  We introduced a new feature, and
this discussion is whether that feature should or shouldn't be turned
on by default.  There's no previous default here.

> This has been stated more than once now by more than one
> person.  But you keep giving the argument that turning it
> on for pretesting is beneficial.  So it is.  So turn it
> on for pretesting, to get more feedback, and off for
> the release.

We have enough time to decide about the default for the release.
Hopefully, we will have more data then than we have now, and the
decision will be more informed one.