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From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
To: Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Cc: aaptel@suse.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Quoting t and nil in docstrings (was: [Emacs-diffs] master b952385: Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string")
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2019 22:19:41 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <E1grwhZ-0005SO-DJ@fencepost.gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <jwvzhr76959.fsf-monnier+emacs@gnu.org> (message from Stefan Monnier on Thu, 07 Feb 2019 08:12:04 -0500)

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > This is as good an opportunity as any to question our long-standing
  > convention that the symbols `nil` and `t` are treated specially in
  > docstrings in the sense that we don't surround them with the customary
  > `...'.

I decided on that exception because generally it is convenient.
Symbols as fundamental as t and nil don't need markup.

  > I think we could at least change our convention to say that nil and
  > t don't have to be quoted rather than to say that they should not
  > be quoted.

I would agree with saying it is ok to give them quotes in special cases
where that makes the text clearer.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)





      parent reply	other threads:[~2019-02-08  3:19 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <20190207085733.4723.6852@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org>
     [not found] ` <20190207085734.B17CF2047A@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org>
2019-02-07 13:12   ` Quoting t and nil in docstrings (was: [Emacs-diffs] master b952385: Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string") Stefan Monnier
2019-02-07 13:30     ` Quoting t and nil in docstrings Robert Pluim
2019-02-07 14:52     ` Quoting t and nil in docstrings (was: [Emacs-diffs] master b952385: Revert "Fix typo in add-hook doc string") Drew Adams
2019-02-08  3:19     ` Richard Stallman [this message]

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