From: "Paul W. Rankin" <hello@paulwrankin.com>
To: rms@gnu.org
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Improving aesthetics & readability of backquote
Date: Tue, 21 May 2019 12:06:17 +1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <m2woikmuhy.fsf@paulwrankin.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <E1hSrZF-00008Y-Su@fencepost.gnu.org>
On Tue, May 21 2019, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Backquote is a well-known construct, a de-facto standard since
> over 40
> years ago. For a while, backquote in Emacs Lisp was
> incompatible with
> the standard, because I was trying to keep the code small. But
> in the
> 90s we changed Emacs Lisp to fit the standard.
>
> To change it is unthinkable.
I'm not suggesting to change it, in the sense I take that you mean
as unthinkable, i.e. that change means doing away with the
existing implementation. I'm only suggesting to give people
(particularly those new to Emacs) the freedom to choose a more
literal syntax that fits with the aesthetics of the surrounding
code.
This is not dissimilar to the aforementioned rx library. Like the
backquote construct, regular expression is an efficient but
cryptic syntax, and rx gives people the freedom to choose a more
literal syntax (which also fits with the aesthetics of the
surrounding code) if they find the real syntax too cryptic and
scary. They can use it like training wheels before switching to
the real syntax (which was my introduction to regular
expressions). This is all I'm suggesting -- free software giving
people freedom, rather than adhering to the preferences of someone
40 years ago.
Given that at least annually there's a huge thread on the mailing
list or elsewhere about how Emacs is fading into irrelevance (!)
and the dire need to attract more users (!), I think it's
worthwhile really trying to look at things from the perspective of
new users -- backquote may well be a 40-year-old standard, but
before learning Emacs Lisp, I'd never heard of it, and I assume
most people are the same.
--
https://www.paulwrankin.com
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-05-21 2:06 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 29+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-05-20 3:03 Improving aesthetics & readability of backquote Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 3:38 ` Stefan Monnier
2019-05-22 15:44 ` Stefan Monnier
2019-05-20 8:52 ` Alan Mackenzie
2019-05-20 13:25 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 14:02 ` Alan Mackenzie
2019-05-20 14:26 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 16:08 ` Ken Olum
2019-05-20 23:19 ` Richard Stallman
2019-05-21 2:06 ` Paul W. Rankin [this message]
2019-05-21 2:22 ` Noam Postavsky
2019-05-21 2:39 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-21 20:19 ` Richard Stallman
2019-05-22 2:46 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-22 7:56 ` Eli Zaretskii
2019-05-22 8:55 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-22 15:57 ` Michael Heerdegen
2019-05-22 16:13 ` 조성빈
2019-05-22 16:13 ` Michael Heerdegen
2019-05-22 22:40 ` Richard Stallman
2019-05-20 8:59 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2019-05-20 13:35 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 13:47 ` Basil L. Contovounesios
2019-05-20 14:18 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 14:48 ` Basil L. Contovounesios
2019-05-20 15:25 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2019-05-20 23:21 ` Richard Stallman
2019-05-21 2:34 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-22 16:14 ` Sam Steingold
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