Re: Confused by y-or-n-p

[Gregory Heytings via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>]

>> Perhaps I did not look at the right place, but I do not see such a rule 
>> or guideline in CONTRIBUTE or elsewhere.  What do you (and others) 
>> think of the following:
>>
>> Any change that matters to end-users should have an entry in etc/NEWS. 
>> *In principle, any such change should, unless it is an added feature, 
>> either require setting a variable to be enabled, or be reversible by 
>> setting a variable.*
>
> I am against such a change, for the reasons given in my previous 
> message.
>

Which previous message?  I don't see reasons against such a guideline in 
your previous message sent to this list.

>>> Do you have any evidence to back up the claim that this has happened?
>>
>> It happened with y-or-n-p; it would not have happened with the above 
>> guideline.
>
> I don't think the second part of that sentence logically follows from 
> the first.
>

Just look at the entry for this change in NEWS.27 (and the 
read-char-from-minibuffer one), which does not explain how to revert it, 
unlike the three other entries in the "Minibuffer" section:

*** 'y-or-n-p' now uses the minibuffer to read 'y' or 'n' answer.

*** Some commands that previously used 'read-char-choice' now read a 
character using the minibuffer by 'read-char-from-minibuffer'.

It seems to me that the "Any change that matters to end-users should have 
an entry in etc/NEWS" rule in CONTRIBUTE, which is already applied 
successfully, is also a good way to distinguish changes that are 
potentially controversial from the others, hence the proposal above.