Subject: Re: bug#31231: Symbol search broken in NEWS and ChangeLogs

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 05:31:12 +0300

> From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 22:16:16 +0300
> 
> > Emacs itself does, not just in Info.  The standalone Info reader (part
> > of the Texinfo package) has a slightly different solution.
> 
> Then using the same solution as not just for Info, Emacs will automatically
> substitute ASCII characters for undisplayable Unicode ones in all
> other places like NEWS and ChangeLogs.

You for some reason elided the part where I explained why an
Emacs-only solution is unacceptable.

> > Is "M-s ." the main/only problem?
> 
> Not only ‘M-s .’, more so ‘M-s _’ where neither ‘M-s _ C-M-y’
> nor ‘M-s _ C-M-w’ work when used at the beginning of the symbol.
> 
> It's a good habit to use symbol search to search symbols because
> it reduces the likelihood of errors, so using it should be
> encouraged in NEWS and ChangeLogs.

I think you are trying to use features that make no sense in
text-based modes.  Just because the text mentions symbols quoted in
some way doesn't yet mean that text is like a program source.

Maybe we should have separate (sub)commands for when symbols are
mentioned within human-readable text.  Tweaking what a word is due to
this is a too large hammer, IMO.