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: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 02:18:39 +0900 Message-ID: <87wpz4houo.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <20150615142237.GA3517@acm.fritz.box> <21886.63821.737412.422567@a1i15.kph.uni-mainz.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1434388741 19536 80.91.229.3 (15 Jun 2015 17:19:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 17:19:01 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Alan Mackenzie , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Ulrich Mueller Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Jun 15 19:18:54 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 1Z4Y29-0000Cr-JH for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 19:18:53 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:35555 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z4Y28-0001Iy-PN for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 13:18:52 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:57819) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z4Y25-0001Ip-6N for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 13:18:50 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z4Y1z-0006iD-Tj for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 13:18:48 -0400 Original-Received: from shako.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.161]:45282) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Z4Y1z-0006h5-K2 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 15 Jun 2015 13:18:43 -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 BBACB1C3904; Tue, 16 Jun 2015 02:18:39 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 95AE61A2CA2; Tue, 16 Jun 2015 02:18:39 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: <21886.63821.737412.422567@a1i15.kph.uni-mainz.de> 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:187187 Archived-At: Ulrich Mueller writes: > U+0060 shouldn't be used as a quote character, for the simple reason > that it isn't one. U+0060 is uniquely defined as the GRAVE ACCENT > character, and as such it doesn't form a pair with U+0027 APOSTROPHE. > (It forms a pair with U+00B4 ACUTE ACCENT: `=C2=B4 but the latter is > outside of the ASCII range, and of course both are unsuitable as > quotes.) And both of those characters are quite useless because they're not combining characters. (Note that proper usage for displaying an isolated accent in Unicode is to accent a no-break space.) In some sense, they're compatibility characters that "shouldn't" appear in modern (natural language) text at all. (In fact, that's apparently not entirely true. U+00B4 is indeed treated as a compatibility character for the sequence U+0020 U+0301, but U+0060 isn't. Weird, but I bet that's precisely because of usage of GRAVE ACCENT to construct quotation marks in contexts like Emacs and TeX.) So I have no problem in principle with Emacs coopting GRAVE ACCENT as "informal" syntax for indicating symbols or code in documentation. I'm mildly in favor of the change, but pedantic adherence to Unicode isn't one of my reasons.