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

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2017 16:28:28 -0700

[dropping emacs-devel on Drew's request.]

On 06/07/2017 12:13 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> What I am arguing against is being required to use _two_ format 
> strings in one message invocation, as (message "%s" (format "..." ...)).

We could address this problem by defining a new function (‘memo’, say), 
that acts like ‘message’ except that it takes just one argument and does 
no format processing. That way, instead of writing (message "%s" (format 
FMT A B C)), one could write (memo (format FMT A B C)), thus avoiding 
the need for two format strings.

> _Nobody_ will have the slightest difficulty with % in message, because 
> it stands out visually.

I don’t see what “standing out visually” has to do it. If one naively 
expects (message "30%-50% done") to display "30%-50% done", one will be 
surprised/disappointed/angry/whatever when Emacs displays only "30% done".

> It may be documented, but it's still surreptitious.  It seems intended by its writer to be as hidden as possible

It’s not intended to be “surreptitious” or “hidden” or anything like 
that, and we should fix any part of the documentation that suggests 
otherwise. It would be helpful to point out any specific parts of the 
documentation needing improvement in this area.