Subject: bug#24510: 25.1; Info: searching for ` does not find what looks like `

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 20:57:39 +0300

> Cc: [email-masked]
> From: Clément Pit--Claudel <[email-masked]>
> Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 13:24:50 -0400
> 
> > Not just the number of characters matters: the number of Unicode 
> > blocks also matters, maybe even more.  Each block is some script, so 
> > supporting less blocks means less scripts supported by the default 
> > font.  Emacs will have then look for a different font, which makes 
> > less pleasant display, creates text alignment problems, etc.
> 
> Thanks for the explanation. But MingLiu supports 34 blocks, while Courier New supports 23.  In particular, MingLiu has support for traditional Chinese and Japanese Hiragana and Katakana, which Courier New lacks.

Out of 34 blocks MingLiu supports, one third is CJK blocks.  The other
blocks support Latin and Greek scripts, and that's about all.

We don't use Courier New for CJK anyway, as it doesn't cover those
well.  But neither does Consolas, and I find it hard to believe you
are saying that we should switch from Courier New to MingLiu as the
default font: that'd be absurd.

> > I personally consider Consolas worse than Courier New, because 
> > Consolas's coverage is clearly biased towards European scripts.
> 
> True.  But Courier is biased too.

It's less biased, though.

> In fact, virtually all programming fonts are biased in that way, maybe as an unfortunate artifact of most programming languages themselves being biased towards ASCII.  In selecting the default Emacs font, we're trying to ensure that users have an agreeable experience: if most of what they look at in a monospace font is covered by ASCII, then it's not clear to me that it makes sense to select a monospace font based on coverage only.

Emacs supports non-programming applications as well, not just
programming modes.  In fact, the trigger for this discussion was Info,
a non-programming mode very close to Text mode.

> > One reason is that Emacs has a wider range of different
> > applications, where being able to support as many languages and
> > scripts as possible is more important than in Studio or even Vim.
> > E.g., at least some of the editors you mention are never used as
> > email/news clients or Web browsers, where the ability to support as
> > many scripts as possible is important.
> 
> Do many of these applications require a monospace font?

We use a monospaced font for the default face because it suits well
both programming and non-programming modes, and because aligning text
is much easier with such a font.  Text alignment is important in modes
that present summaries in tabular form, like modes that show listing
of buffers, email summaries, Dired, Proced, etc.

> Eww now defaults to a proportional face, doesn't it?

By default, yes; but there's "M-x eww-toggle-fonts".