Subject: Re: bug#23425: master branch: `message' wrongly corrupts ' to curly quote.

From: Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 May 2017 21:24:52 +0000

Hello, Paul.

On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 18:42:00 -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 05/30/2017 06:07 PM, Glenn Morris wrote:
> > A year has passed. Is this report still relevant?

Yes, it is very much relevant.  The bug has not been fixed.  In
particular, somebody using `message' to generate quotes in the natural
and obvious fashion (possibly intending to resubmit them to the lisp
reader) will get them corrupted, and will lose much time and energy
attempting to diagnose the puzzling bug which results, possibly giving
up.

The only documentation for this feature is obscure and hidden.  There
is nothing in `message''s doc string which explicitly states likely
unwanted replacement of characters takes place; just a puzzling
"exception proves the rule" paragraph.

> No, as the patch I installed into master a year ago appears to have 
> fixed the problem by supporting Alan's original request in Bug#23425#26 

That appearance is deceptive.  And my original complaint was most
assuredly not in #26 of that thread.  Your workaround did not fix the
problem.  The problem, stated above, is the waste of other people's time
and energy inevitably caused by the current code and default options.  A
fix would be a state in which somebody could use `message' in emacs -Q
without getting caught up in all this stuff.

> of having a value for text-quoting-style that would "suppress all 
> substitution of quotes". (setq text-quoting-style 'grave) now has the 
> desired effect. Closing.

Well, thanks a bunch for giving me a chance to state my view before
closing this bug.  Notice that both Glenn's post and your response were
made in the middle of the night, European time, without there being
intervening European day time.

This bug has not been fixed.  That judgement is mine, as the person who
raised it in the first place.  Did you close this bug as "won't fix"?
Although not good, that would at least be better than pretending it's
been fixed and sweeping it back under the carpet.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).