Subject: bug#21472: 25.0.50; REGRESSION: (emacs) `Coding Systems' uses curly quotes for Lisp strings

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2015 20:18:19 +0300

> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
> From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
> Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2015 08:31:00 -0700
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > For example, any use of "magic" where no real magic (as in Gandalf
> > coming in and performing it) should be quoted, because the literal
> > meaning is too far-fetched.  Likewise in other similar situations,
> 
> I'll give you “magic” as that is a gray area, where it's no big deal either way, 
> but there are many other quotes that are clearly unnecessary, e.g.:
> 
>    Some mice have a ``wheel''

It's not a wheel, it's a button whose shape is round and which can be
rotated as well as pressed.  Wheels are what cars and bicycles have.

>    The @dfn{clipboard} is the facility that most graphical applications use for 
> ``cutting and pasting''.

We've always used "cut and paste" in quotes in Emacs, as it's not our
terminology.

>    If you exit Emacs while it is the current ``owner'' of the clipboard data,

Emacs doesn't own anything here: clipboard data is not some real
estate or money.

>    the @var{predicate} should return non-@code{nil} if the first element is 
> ``less'' than the second, or @code{nil} if not.

"Less" here is in the eyes of the beholder; arbitrary objects do not
have intrinsic order or comparison operators.  It's our invention.

> Quotes like these are a disservice to the reader: the reader must slow down and 
> process them and think “why is this phrase being quoted?” and the answer to that 
> question is not worth the cost of the mental processing.

On the contrary, these quotes are most natural, and no such questions
will ever pop up in anyone's mind.

> There is no need to quote the word “push” merely because it is used
> as a noun!

Of course, there is: you don't really "push" anything.  "Push" here is
jargon for copying DAG portions from one location to another.  A
chapter whose subject is VCS should know better.