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

From: Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2017 10:01:03 +0000

Hello, Paul.

On Fri, Jun 09, 2017 at 17:20:58 -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Drew Adams wrote:
> > Where was that concern when you hijacked `message'?

> There is no need for personal and inflammatory language like that.

I think there is.  In a group of people who are invariably nice to each
other, there is the opportunity for rogues to exploit that niceness, and
to do deeply unpleasant things without comeback.  In this case, you are
that rogue, and it is about time somebody called you out on your
behaviour.

Before committing changes which are controversial, or which will
adversely affect others, it's expected to have a full and open
discussion on emacs-devel.  You surreptitiously committed this backward
incompatible change to `message' on 2015-08-25, without first having
initiated such a discussion.  Because of the way you did this, those
incompatibilities remained hidden until they hit another developer (me)
in a thoroughly unpleasant way some time later.

You did indeed hijack `message'.  You changed a generally useful and
universal function into one with caveats and gotchas to satisfy your own
personal preferences and, likely, a desire to impose those preferences
on Emacs users generally.

I suggest that you now apologise for what you did back in August 2015,
promising never to do the same thing again.

[ .... ]

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).