Subject: bug#20385: [PROPOSED PATCH] Support quoting 'like this' in doc strings

From: Nicolas Petton <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2015 13:15:09 +0200

Paul Eggert writes:

> Nicolas Petton wrote:
>> inserting curved quotes when the user types a single quote (or
>> another character) in a string in Elisp code?  Wouldn't that be a big
>> issue in other modes (or even outside of Emacs)?
>
> I don't see why it would need to affect other modes, or affect
> programs other than Emacs.  The idea is to to make it easier for Elisp
> programmers to put curved single quotes into doc strings.

It's not about affecting other modes, but the fact that quoting code in
elisp docstrings would only be reasonably doable from Emacs' elisp mode,
since curved quotes aren't easy to type.  That could be a problem in
cases like answering elisp question on SE, in an email, etc.

> Of course there is a more-general problem of making it easier to use
> curved quotes in arbitrary contexts (including contexts outside
> Emacs), but that problem needn't be solved here.

I don't think it's worth it to make it unnecessarily hard to write
elisp docstrings anywhere else than in emacs-lisp-mode in Emacs.

It might look like I insist, but something `like-this` looks more than
ok to me:

- it is a really common practice nowadays and most people understand
  what it means.  Many projects use Markdown in their README for
  example;

- it doesn't require to use a special character (understand characters
  that one cannot easily type on a QWERTY keyboard);

- it fixes the "unbalanced" quotes issue that you raised as well as
  using a curved single quote.

But again, I don't see the need for a change at all, and I have never
seen how quoted code looked like in older terminals.

Cheers,
Nico
-- 
Nicolas Petton
http://nicolas-petton.fr