GNU bug report logs - #20385
Support curved quotes in doc strings

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From: Drew Adams <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>, Drew Adams <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
Cc: eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu, 20385 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, dgutov <at> yandex.ru
Subject: bug#20385: [PROPOSED PATCH] Support quoting 'like this' in doc strings
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2015 07:11:24 -0700 (PDT)

> > > Those who follow Markus Kuhn's advice, read here:
> > >   http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html
> >
> > ...where the *only* argument given is, again, "it looked rather
> > ugly".  That is the only "why do they want that" that we have
> > heard, so far.
> 
> You are missing the point: this paper wants those "rather ugly"
> characters to disappear from text content, and not everybody out
> there uses Emacs for editing and reading that.

No, I didn't miss the fact that the paper is not about Emacs etc.
The only _reason given_ in that paper for dropping use of `...'
quoting (anywhere, everywhere) is what I quoted: "it looked rather
ugly".

> So an Emacs-only solution that just _shows_ the nice characters,
> leaving the underlying text with `..' is not what that paper
> wants, or preaches for.

Agreed, but that has nothing to do with what I said.  He goes
beyond wanting nice appearance, yes.  He wants the content to
reflect the appearance, yes.  But the only reason he gave for
any change was the "rather ugly" appearance.

> > And of course Mr. Kuhn is not specifically talking about an
> > environment such as Emacs, where you do more with text than
> > just read it.
> 
> He doesn't talk about Emacs at all.

You are repeating my point.  He is not talking about Emacs or
anything similar to Emacs.  Except that he seems to be talking
generally: As you say, "the old quoting characters" should
"never be used" anywhere "for quoting purposes".

That includes Emacs.  But he does not speak to the uses of
`...' in a context like Emacs.  He wants all contexts to change,
but he makes no argument that takes a context like Emacs into
account.

> He's talking about the world at large.  People who want to
> follow him want the old quoting characters to never be used
> at all for quoting purposes.

Maybe so.  But the argument given is far too weak to apply to
Emacs.  That "rather ugly" reason might be sufficient for some
people for some contexts.  It is not a strong argument for a
context like Emacs.

In the context of Emacs we should hear something more in favor
of such a change.  So far, we haven't.

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