GNU bug report logs - #23425
master branch: `message' wrongly corrupts ' to curly quote.

Previous Next

Full log

Message #44 received at 23425 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Alan Mackenzie <acm <at> muc.de>
Cc: eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu, 23425 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#23425: master branch: `message' wrongly corrupts ' to curly
 quote.
Date: Wed, 04 May 2016 18:32:40 +0300

> Date: Tue, 3 May 2016 20:03:30 +0000
> Cc: eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu, 23425 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm <at> muc.de>
> 
> > > And why is it something that users shouldn't routinely do?
> 
> > Because the theory behind this change is that everyone will want that,
> > certainly after they get used to it a little.
> 
> That seems a very strange attitude from an Emacs developer - that one
> developer's personal preferences should be imposed on all Emacs users
> without the possibility of disabling by configuration.
> 
> It is quite clear from posts in emacs-devel and bug-gnu-emacs over the
> last year or so that NOT EVERYBODY wants these curly quote changes.  Far
> from it.  Just like not everybody wants light text on a dark background,
> or (thinking back to Emacs 21) not everybody wants fringes on their GUI
> screen.  Users were complaining for years about the unconfigurable
> fringes, until Emacs 22 was released.

This is unfair on so many levels, that I simply lost any motivation to
continue this discussion.

> > If that theory is wrong, we will have to change much more than just
> > document that variable or teach users to use it more.
> 
> That theory _is_ wrong, certainly amongst Emacs developers.  Even in this
> bug thread, two other people have expressed negative sentiments about
> this matter.

So we have 3 people against that.  Is it really enough?

> > > Surely it should be a configuration variable.  Some people, like me,
> > > don't like being lied to by a computer program.
> 
> > You are not being lied to.  Just think of ` and ' as yet another
> > format specifier character, not unlike %.
> 
> They're not - they're literal characters.

So is %.

> >   emacs -Q
> >   M-: (setq text-quoting-style 'grave) RET
> >   M-: (message "`this'") RET => `this'
> 
> > What am I missing?
> 
> That in that scenario, (message "`this'") ; with curly quotes
> gets converted to "`this'" ; with ASCII quotes.  This is not wanted.

Not sure why.  But anyway, the change such as what you suggest is too
pervasive to install on the emacs-25 branch, unless we want to delay
the release.  Too bad these issues didn't come up in time.

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.