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: On the masking of undisplayable characters Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2015 21:16:47 +0300 Message-ID: <83wpydup68.fsf@gnu.org> References: Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1436206651 16714 80.91.229.3 (6 Jul 2015 18:17:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2015 18:17:31 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: bruce.connor.am@gmail.com Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Jul 06 20:17:21 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 1ZCAxF-0001Cy-CN for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 06 Jul 2015 20:17:21 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:52372 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZCAxE-0007RO-Kt for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 06 Jul 2015 14:17:20 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:57622) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZCAx2-0007Qx-4k for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 06 Jul 2015 14:17:09 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZCAwu-0001RV-Ly for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 06 Jul 2015 14:17:03 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout23.012.net.il ([80.179.55.175]:54155) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZCAwu-0001RR-EP for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 06 Jul 2015 14:17:00 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout23.012.net.il by a-mtaout23.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0NR200500VY6RA00@a-mtaout23.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 06 Jul 2015 21:16:58 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([87.69.4.28]) by a-mtaout23.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0NR2005OZW48M980@a-mtaout23.012.net.il>; Mon, 06 Jul 2015 21:16:58 +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: 80.179.55.175 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:187748 Archived-At: > Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2015 18:38:13 +0100 > From: > > I just noticed we have a feature where we use display tables to mask characters > that cannot be displayed. What characters are you talking about, specifically? > When this happens, it caused me quite a bit of confusion, as I tried to type > one thing and something else got inserted. I eventually thought of > investigating the character (which revealed it was being masked by the display > table), but many users wouldn't know to do this. > > Could we have a message to let the user know when this happens? Something like > "undisplayable char being displayed as X". > > I know this is meant to be helpful, but displaying something different from > what's in the file is a pretty big deal. I'm not entirely sure it should be > done without consent, but it definitely shouldn't be done silently. It's hard to respond without knowing the details. Most of the uses of display tables I know of are there for ages, so adding some kind of message about that now would seem inappropriate. (And when exactly do we display that message? when the character is first displayed?) Then again, I think you might be over-reacting a bit: Emacs always displayed special characters specially. Think about the ^X control characters, the glyphless-char-display feature, composed characters, even the newline. There's nothing new here.