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

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2017 15:51:03 -0700 (PDT)

> Although the proposed function is similar to the message
> function, it differs in that it does not restyle quotes.

It is function `message', not your proposed function `memo',
that should not "restyle" quote chars.

If you want a function that restyles quote chars then _that_
should be a new function.  Existing code - and future code -
that uses `message' should not have any such "restyling"
imposed on it.

If you had simply offered to add such a new function, I
doubt that anyone would have complained.  Seriously.

Instead, you had to impose this incompatible and specialized
prettification on the longstanding and ubiquitous, stalwart
workhorse function `message'.

That was a grave design error.  It should never have been
allowed.

> it depends not only on doing the work for Emacs itself, but also for
> third-party software written in Elisp. These are significant costs.

Really?  You are actually arguing for concern about 3rd-party
maintenance work now?  This is like DJT complaining about fake
news from others.

Where was that concern when you hijacked `message'?  Where was
your proposal to create another function, then?

> Users should not be required to litter their code with hard-to-read
> formats like "Can%'t encode %`0x%x%' with this buffer%'s coding system"
> to get decent quoting.

And now you are concerned about users?  Where was that concern
when you imposed an incompatible change on `message'?

> existing callers such as (message "%s" filename) would continue
> to operate as before, and would not need to be changed.

Where was your concern about letting `message' callers be
able to continue operating as before, before?