From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Upcoming loss of usability of Emacs source files and Emacs. Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:29:09 +0900 Message-ID: <87r3p9fxm2.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <20150615142237.GA3517@acm.fritz.box> <87y4jkhqh5.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <557F3C22.4060909@cs.ucla.edu> <5580D356.4050708@cs.ucla.edu> <87si9qonxb.fsf@gnu.org> <5581C29E.1030101@yandex.ru> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1434601787 925 80.91.229.3 (18 Jun 2015 04:29:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2015 04:29:47 +0000 (UTC) Cc: acm@muc.de, Paul Eggert , emacs-devel@gnu.org, Stefan Monnier , rms@gnu.org To: Dmitry Gutov Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jun 18 06:29:33 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 1Z5RSE-0005yp-51 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 18 Jun 2015 06:29:30 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:50159 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z5RSD-0004S2-8D for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 18 Jun 2015 00:29:29 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:43509) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z5RS1-0004Rx-DF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 18 Jun 2015 00:29:18 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z5RRx-0004E1-8s for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 18 Jun 2015 00:29:17 -0400 Original-Received: from shako.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.161]:43221) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z5RRw-0004CG-VN; Thu, 18 Jun 2015 00:29:13 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by shako.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0006C1C3970; Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:29:09 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id CF2DE1A2CA2; Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:29:09 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: <5581C29E.1030101@yandex.ru> X-Mailer: VM undefined under 21.5 (beta34) "kale" 83e5c3cd6be6 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 130.158.97.161 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:187258 Archived-At: Dmitry Gutov writes: > On 06/17/2015 04:03 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote: > > > To me, one of the motivations for the change (after the visual > > aspect) is to have a *more* robust handling because it is *less* > > ambiguous (within the context of Elisp). > > That is probably true, but by that logic, using rare unicode > characters is a great choice for any markup language. You're missing the point by calling them "rare". They are *not* rare; they are in daily use by the 99.44% of the English-speaking population that *doesn't* program. Of course using a WYSIWYG word processor is a blatant admission that you don't care about backward, forward, or cross-system compatibility of your document, and *we* can't do that with programming languages. The point is that these characters have better semantics from the point of view of *new* programmers and even non-programmers. Really, isn't it time to start moving in that direction now that Unicode has clearly won? > Yet, I don't see anybody doing that. APL. Seriously, why would any language designer who cares about popularity as such risk the wrath of the ASCII-capped lobby? Emacs cares about popularity of course, but as Drew and RMS are always at pains to point out, we don't do things in Emacs because they're popular, we do them because they are "right" (or, what is more important, because they're directly freedom-enhancing), and hope to popularize TRT through Emacs. > Markdown, for instance, when rendered, only emphasizes code > segments using a special tag, which translates into a different > font face/color/etc. I don't see why we won't choose to do that, or > allow users to customize that aspect. That would be insane. Markdown (and ReST) do that because they, too, need to deal with the ASCII-capped lobby, or at least they still did when they were first developed a decade or so ago. But *humans* don't need tags, and programs are rapidly acquiring the ability to do without. I believe we should look forward to the day when that is the norm, and *get there first*. That same capability should do 90% of the job of disambiguating usage of these *common* characters, and backslash-escaping should get 90% of the rest. It's still going to requiring people to change their habits, and that is not going to make conservatives like Drew and Alan happy (at first: if I didn't believe they'd find reason to come around, I wouldn't propose it). Can't make everybody happy all the time.