From: Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
Cc: npostavs@users.sourceforge.net,
Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>,
emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Change of Lisp syntax for "fancy" quotes in Emacs 27?
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2018 02:16:52 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87r2q1r1tn.fsf@web.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <83wozu9f6r.fsf@gnu.org> (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Sat, 03 Feb 2018 19:05:32 +0200")
Hello,
Helpfulness of error messages surely depends on the beholder, and on
expectations. In my eyes,
> Symbol's value as variable is void: 'аbbrevs-changed
is quite clear: you think this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ is a quoted
thing, but the error message calls it a symbol. So there must be a
problem with that quote, it has obviously gotten read as part of the
symbol. Sure, you have still to find out why. OTOH
> > (invalid-read-syntax "strange quote" "’")
also doesn't say what's wrong with that quote. It even calls something
a quote where there is none. The error message is confusing. Repeating
the pseudo quote character in the error message doesn't make it look
less like a quote.
> I think you are so eager to make your point that you are willing to
> claim that black is white and vice versa. Any objective person would
> agree that the new error message is more directly pointing to the root
> cause
Are you really sure that every Emacs user would expect that we modify
the Lisp reader to catch typos?
FWIW, we already modified the Lisp reader to catch another style issue
(to get rid of old-style backquotes) and made it error. It broke my
stuff (el-search) horribly - though I don't use old-style backquotes,
and for code that also doesn't use them. Now I need to work around
`read' and define my own `read' function. I also need to remember for a
long time that using `read' is forbidden in my library. I even
implemented a minor mode to warn me just about that: it warns me that I
use `read' and it's forbidden. Otherwise, I would get strange errors
when using my stuff, from time to time, whenever I added a `read' by
accident. All other users of my package, too. And believe me, _these_
error messages are then less understandable than
> Symbol's value as variable is void: 'аbbrevs-changed.
Misusing something fundamental as the Lisp reader to catch such stuff
should be the very last resort. The result can get much more confusing
in situations we now don't think about.
> > Lisp doesn't have a bug here.
> That's a strawman, and you know it. We are talking about diagnostics
> for bugs in Lisp programs.
I think it's a eligible argument. Drew just thinks it's the wrong fix.
He may also think that no fix would maybe suffice. That's ok, and I
think he made some good points.
We should discuss about alternative approaches to move forward. People
often paste stuff into scratch or the M-: prompt that they copied from
elsewhere. Maybe we could make M-: and C-x C-e check for this problem.
These could also check for other, similar frequent problems. Any better
suggestions?
Michael.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-02-04 1:16 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 98+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-02-02 22:24 Change of Lisp syntax for "fancy" quotes in Emacs 27? Noam Postavsky
2018-02-02 22:52 ` Paul Eggert
2018-02-03 0:00 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-03 0:09 ` Paul Eggert
2018-02-03 0:39 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-03 8:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-03 16:16 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-03 17:05 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-04 1:16 ` Michael Heerdegen [this message]
2018-02-04 1:25 ` Clément Pit-Claudel
2018-02-04 2:05 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-04 2:06 ` Michael Heerdegen
2018-02-04 10:34 ` Alan Third
2018-02-04 15:36 ` Clément Pit-Claudel
2018-02-04 17:37 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-04 21:31 ` Noam Postavsky
2018-02-04 11:15 ` Alan Mackenzie
2018-02-04 15:54 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-04 14:47 ` Noam Postavsky
2018-02-04 1:55 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-04 2:10 ` Noam Postavsky
2018-02-05 1:06 ` Why "symbol's value" error about a list? Richard Stallman
2018-02-05 20:35 ` Alan Mackenzie
2018-02-05 21:46 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-06 4:13 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-06 7:32 ` Tim Cross
2018-02-06 7:40 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-06 15:45 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-06 15:45 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-06 19:17 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-06 14:51 ` Richard Stallman
2018-02-06 11:27 ` Noam Postavsky
2018-02-06 14:53 ` Richard Stallman
2018-02-06 18:59 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-07 2:40 ` Richard Stallman
2018-02-07 3:42 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-06 18:52 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-05 1:06 ` Change of Lisp syntax for "fancy" quotes in Emacs 27? Richard Stallman
2018-02-03 18:13 ` Aaron Ecay
2018-02-04 2:05 ` Drew Adams
2018-02-04 4:51 ` Paul Eggert
2018-02-04 9:47 ` Andreas Schwab
2018-02-04 15:04 ` Noam Postavsky
2018-02-04 17:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-04 19:36 ` Paul Eggert
2018-02-04 19:55 ` Philipp Stephani
2018-02-04 20:10 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-04 20:36 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-04 20:48 ` Paul Eggert
2018-02-04 20:59 ` Clément Pit-Claudel
2018-10-05 0:03 ` Noam Postavsky
2018-10-05 1:01 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-05 8:43 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-05 23:02 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-06 0:20 ` Drew Adams
2018-10-06 9:14 ` Alan Mackenzie
2018-10-06 14:34 ` Stefan Monnier
2018-10-06 14:57 ` Drew Adams
2018-10-06 15:42 ` Garreau, Alexandre
2018-10-06 16:10 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-06 16:17 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-07 1:13 ` Drew Adams
2018-10-08 3:51 ` Richard Stallman
2018-10-06 10:11 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-06 15:51 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-06 16:45 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-06 18:03 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-06 18:29 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-06 19:18 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-06 19:30 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-06 19:32 ` Garreau, Alexandre
2018-10-06 11:22 ` Garreau, Alexandre
2018-10-06 11:50 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-06 12:10 ` Garreau, Alexandre
2018-10-06 14:00 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-24 22:25 ` Noam Postavsky
2018-10-06 13:15 ` Unicode security-issues workarounds elsewhere [Was: Re: Change of Lisp syntax for "fancy" quotes in Emacs 27?] Garreau, Alexandre
2018-10-06 14:01 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-06 16:24 ` Change of Lisp syntax for "fancy" quotes in Emacs 27? Paul Eggert
2018-10-06 16:40 ` Stefan Monnier
2018-10-09 14:43 ` Noam Postavsky
2018-10-09 15:30 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-09 16:13 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-09 17:07 ` Paul Eggert
2018-10-09 19:18 ` Andreas Schwab
2018-10-10 9:39 ` Aaron Ecay
2018-10-10 11:18 ` Garreau, Alexandre
2018-10-10 14:31 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-10 15:18 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-10 15:43 ` Drew Adams
2018-10-10 16:08 ` Yuri Khan
2018-10-15 20:30 ` Juri Linkov
2018-10-10 3:58 ` Richard Stallman
2018-10-10 3:57 ` Richard Stallman
2018-10-10 14:41 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-10-11 5:01 ` Richard Stallman
2018-10-06 15:40 ` eval-last-sexp / C-x C-e, and punctuation like `?’' [Was: Re: Change of Lisp syntax for "fancy" quotes in Emacs 27?)] Garreau, Alexandre
2018-10-16 12:48 ` Change of Lisp syntax for "fancy" quotes in Emacs 27? Garreau, Alexandre
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=87r2q1r1tn.fsf@web.de \
--to=michael_heerdegen@web.de \
--cc=drew.adams@oracle.com \
--cc=eliz@gnu.org \
--cc=emacs-devel@gnu.org \
--cc=npostavs@users.sourceforge.net \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this external index
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.