GNU bug report logs - #13228
Request for highlighting back-quote/quote pair notation.

Previous Next

Full log

View this message in rfc822 format

From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
To: "'Oleksandr Gavenko'" <gavenkoa <at> gmail.com>, <help-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 13228 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#13228: Request for highlighting back-quote/quote pair notation.
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 09:49:08 -0800

> So `' quoting style is common for info files. I checked it 
> was used for function selection in libc and readline info files.
> Also it was used in GNU Make, R, Autotool and other manuals.
> 
> So having highlighting for `' in info mode is good thing for 
> Emacs user (compare with emacs-lisp-mode, where it was highlighted).
> 
> This is my vote up.

Here is a 2004 thread about this, for reference:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-10/msg00045.html

Be aware that it is not feasible for such highlighting to be foolproof.  There
are sometimes isolated occurrences of characters such as ` and " that do not
indicate quotation bounds, for instance.  And some nested or overlapping
quotations are not handled correctly, such as this from `(eintr) else':

  `"It's a tiger!"'; but when you evaluate `(type-of-animal 'zebra)',
  you will see `"It's not fierce!"'.

However, last time (2004) I checked in detail, there were "only *4* nodes of the
Elisp Manual that exhibit any highlighting problem at all, and those pbs are
minor.  This is a big manual."  That's not bad.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-10/msg00197.html

At that time I also checked other manuals, with the findings detailed here:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-10/msg00206.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-10/msg00234.html

A subsequent version of the code fixed some of those problems.
Here is my last message in that thread:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-10/msg00301.html

Among other things, this highlighting can be helpful in finding certain bugs in
the manuals.  During that thread several such bugs were found and corrected.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.