GNU bug report logs - #7925
23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:57:44 +0000

Pretty much every time I use report-emacs-bug, I get the message
“Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal?” There are two problems here:

1. From looking at the code in report-emacs-bug-hook, it really means
“non-ASCII characters”, as it looks for any non-7-bit character, not
just non-7-bit letters.

2. In this age of UTF-8, and, for example, my use of smart-quotes-mode,
what do you have against non-ASCII characters? Perhaps you’d like to try
to make sure that mail to report-emacs-bug is in English, but for that
you should be using some form of linguistic analysis.


In GNU Emacs 23.2.91.4 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.22.0)
 of 2011-01-13 on canta
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10900000
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_GB.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Fundamental

Minor modes in effect:
  shell-dirtrack-mode: t
  recentf-mode: t
  show-paren-mode: t
  savehist-mode: t
  minibuffer-electric-default-mode: t
  iswitchb-mode: t
  icomplete-mode: t
  global-whitespace-mode: t
  global-auto-revert-mode: t
  desktop-save-mode: t
  yas/global-mode: t
  yas/minor-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  column-number-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
n SPC a SPC t e r m i n a l M-q C-e <return> <return> 
E v e n SPC i f SPC i t SPC d o e s n ' t SPC w o r 
k <M-backspace> <M-backspace> <M-backspace> <M-backspace> 
<M-backspace> <M-backspace> I n SPC a n y SPC c a s 
e , SPC i t SPC w o u l d SPC b e SPC n i c e SPC t 
o SPC l o w e r SPC u s e r s ' SPC e x p e c t a t 
i o n s SPC b y SPC p o i n t i n g SPC o u t SPC t 
h a t SPC C-h f c d <return> C-p C-p C-p C-p C-n C-n 
C-n C-n C-n C-SPC C-n C-n C-n C-n C-w C-x b <return> 
<M-backspace> i n SPC t h e SPC c o <backspace> <backspace> 
d o c s t r i n g SPC f d o <backspace> <backspace> 
<backspace> f o r <backspace> r SPC c d , SPC a n d 
SPC i n SPC t h e SPC m a n u a l , SPC t h a t SPC 
i t SPC d o e s n ' t SPC a p p l y SPC d u r i n g 
SPC <backspace> <backspace> <M-backspace> t o SPC i 
n t e r a c t i v e SPC c o m p l e t i o n . M-q C-x 
# C-c C-c n y e s <return> <help-echo> C-x b M e s 
s <return> M-> M-x r e p o r t - e m a c s - b u g 
<return>

Recent messages:
Auto-saving...done
Type "q" to restore this window.
Mark set
Read only text copied to kill ring
No server editing buffers exist
Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal? (y or n) 
Sending...
Sending via mail...
Sending...done
Mark set

Load-path shadows:
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/ruby-mode-1.1/ruby-mode hides /usr/share/emacs-snapshot/site-lisp/ruby1.8-elisp/ruby-mode
/home/rrt/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/popup hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auto-complete/popup
/home/rrt/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/fuzzy hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auto-complete/fuzzy
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/css-mode-1.0/css-mode hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/css-mode/css-mode
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/link hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/link
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/connection hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/connection
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/dictionary-init hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/dictionary-init
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/dictionary-1.8.7/dictionary hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/dictionary
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/css-mode-1.0/css-mode hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/lisp/textmodes/css-mode
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/ruby-mode-1.1/ruby-mode hides /usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/lisp/progmodes/ruby-mode
/home/rrt/.emacs.d/elpa/css-mode-1.0/css-mode hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/css-mode/css-mode
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-info
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-nl
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/context-en hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context-en
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/latex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/latex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-mik
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/dictionary-el/lpath hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/lpath
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-buf hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-buf
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-jp
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-bar
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/multi-prompt
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fptex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-font
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-fold
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/texmathp
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/context hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/context
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/font-latex hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/font-latex
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/bib-cite
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/toolbar-x
/usr/local/share/emacs/23.2.91/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style hides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/auctex/tex-style

Features:
(gnus-msg gnus-art mm-uu mml2015 epg-config mm-view smime dig gnus-sum
nnoo gnus-group gnus-undo nnmail mail-source format-spec gnus-start
gnus-spec gnus-int gnus-range gnus-win gnus gnus-ems newcomment shadow
sort mail-extr message sendmail ecomplete rfc822 mml mml-sec
password-cache mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mailcap mail-parse rfc2231
rfc2047 rfc2045 qp ietf-drums mailabbrev nnheader gnus-util netrc
time-date mm-util mail-prsvr gmm-utils mailheader canlock sha1 hex-util
hashcash mail-utils emacsbug multi-isearch find-func pp help-mode
ansi-color shell gud jka-compr info m4-mode autoconf autoconf-mode view
inform-mode noutline outline tex-info texinfo tex sh-script executable
longlines make-mode vc-git face-remap filladapt flyspell completing-help
recentf tree-widget wid-edit uniquify paren savehist minibuf-eldef
iswitchb icomplete whitespace autorevert time cus-start cus-load desktop
server php-mode etags cc-langs cc-mode cc-fonts cc-menus cc-cmds
cc-styles cc-align cc-engine cc-vars cc-defs speedbar sb-image ezimage
dframe lua-mode regexp-opt comint ring ropemacs pymacs etags-update
smart-quotes ispell auto-dictionary-autoloads css-mode-autoloads
dictionary-autoloads diff-git-autoloads dired-isearch-autoloads
full-ack-autoloads guess-style-autoloads http-post-simple-autoloads
js2-mode-autoloads magit-autoloads mv-shell-autoloads
ruby-mode-autoloads package reporter advice advice-preload yasnippet
help-fns derived edmacro kmacro easymenu assoc cl cl-19 muse-autoloads
emacs-goodies-el emacs-goodies-custom emacs-goodies-loaddefs easy-mmode
bbdb-autoloads preview-latex tex-site auto-loads tooltip ediff-hook
vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel x-win x-dnd font-setting tool-bar dnd
fontset image fringe lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer
select scroll-bar mldrag mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu
font-core frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan
thai tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech
european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook
jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev loaddefs button minibuffer faces
cus-face files text-properties overlay md5 base64 format env code-pages
mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote
make-network-process dbusbind system-font-setting font-render-setting
gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty emacs)

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org/

Message #8 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>
To: Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 18:34:19 -0500

Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org> writes:

> Pretty much every time I use report-emacs-bug, I get the message
> “Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal?” There are two problems here:
>
> 1. From looking at the code in report-emacs-bug-hook, it really means
> “non-ASCII characters”, as it looks for any non-7-bit character, not
> just non-7-bit letters.
>
> 2. In this age of UTF-8, and, for example, my use of smart-quotes-mode,
> what do you have against non-ASCII characters? Perhaps you’d like to try
> to make sure that mail to report-emacs-bug is in English, but for that
> you should be using some form of linguistic analysis.

Maybe this question dates from the days when email was ASCII only.  At
the least, this check ought to only be applied to the mail headers (MIME
is needed for non-ASCII in headers).

Message #11 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, rrt <at> sc3d.org
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 06:13:18 -0500

> From: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>
> Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 18:34:19 -0500
> Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org> writes:
> 
> > Pretty much every time I use report-emacs-bug, I get the message
> > “Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal?” There are two problems here:
> >
> > 1. From looking at the code in report-emacs-bug-hook, it really means
> > “non-ASCII characters”, as it looks for any non-7-bit character, not
> > just non-7-bit letters.
> >
> > 2. In this age of UTF-8, and, for example, my use of smart-quotes-mode,
> > what do you have against non-ASCII characters? Perhaps you’d like to try
> > to make sure that mail to report-emacs-bug is in English, but for that
> > you should be using some form of linguistic analysis.
> 
> Maybe this question dates from the days when email was ASCII only.

Actually, this was added in Emacs 20 or 21, when Emacs got support for
multi-lingual editing.  the reason was to make sure bug reports are
written in English and not in some other languages that maintainers
could not command.  Also, various MUAs, even in Emacs, might convert
non-ASCII characters into illegible mess.

> At the least, this check ought to only be applied to the mail
> headers (MIME is needed for non-ASCII in headers).

Actually, I think the body is the more important part.

If we are willing to allow non-ASCII characters, we should at least
limit that to some subset that does not affect the text itself.
Linguistic analysis seems to be a bit of overkill (this command should
be reliable even in a partially sick Emacs session, remember?).  Maybe
some kind of list of allowed non-ASCII characters will be good enough.

(Not that I understand why it is a problem to use "..." or some such,
when one reports an Emacs bug.  But that's me.)

Message #14 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Štěpán Němec <stepnem <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>, rrt <at> sc3d.org
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:48:46 +0100

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>
>> Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 18:34:19 -0500
>> Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
>> 
>> Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org> writes:
>> 
>> > Pretty much every time I use report-emacs-bug, I get the message
>> > “Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal?” There are two problems here:
>> >
>> > 1. From looking at the code in report-emacs-bug-hook, it really means
>> > “non-ASCII characters”, as it looks for any non-7-bit character, not
>> > just non-7-bit letters.
>> >
>> > 2. In this age of UTF-8, and, for example, my use of smart-quotes-mode,
>> > what do you have against non-ASCII characters? Perhaps you’d like to try
>> > to make sure that mail to report-emacs-bug is in English, but for that
>> > you should be using some form of linguistic analysis.
>> 
>> Maybe this question dates from the days when email was ASCII only.
>
> Actually, this was added in Emacs 20 or 21, when Emacs got support for
> multi-lingual editing.  the reason was to make sure bug reports are
> written in English and not in some other languages that maintainers
> could not command.  Also, various MUAs, even in Emacs, might convert
> non-ASCII characters into illegible mess.

If this is the reason, IMO it is pretty silly. You already say "please
write in English" in the template message. If somebody can ignore that,
they can certainly ignore this mystery meat message, too -- e.g. I had
no idea what it meant and I doubt most other people understand "convert
non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal?" as "please write in English" either.
I always just answer "No", FWIW. (And I get the prompt every single
time, probably just because my name in the signature contains those
naughty new-fangled non-ASCII characters.)

  Štěpán

Message #17 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:33:02 +0000

On 30 January 2011 11:13, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:
>
> the reason was to make sure bug reports are
> written in English and not in some other languages that maintainers
> could not command.

In that case, I suggest it be dropped. It's a bizarre way to try to
enforce English (I could quite happily write Greek or German in plain
ASCII, for example), and as has been pointed out, there is already a
clear request to write in English.

>  Also, various MUAs, even in Emacs, might convert
> non-ASCII characters into illegible mess.

Then they should be fixed to encode the text properly and specify the
encoding. It's a bit late in the day to be working around programs
that can't cope with non-7-bit encodings!

> Maybe
> some kind of list of allowed non-ASCII characters will be good enough.

It would be better than nothing, but the list will never be long
enough. For example, what's wrong with using symbols such as arrows or
smileys, or, in your own example, ellipses?

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org

Message #20 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Štěpán Němec <stepnem <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, cyd <at> stupidchicken.com, rrt <at> sc3d.org
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:01:01 -0500

> From: Štěpán Němec <stepnem <at> gmail.com>
> Cc: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>,  7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,  rrt <at> sc3d.org
> Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:48:46 +0100
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > Actually, this was added in Emacs 20 or 21, when Emacs got support for
> > multi-lingual editing.  the reason was to make sure bug reports are
> > written in English and not in some other languages that maintainers
> > could not command.  Also, various MUAs, even in Emacs, might convert
> > non-ASCII characters into illegible mess.
> 
> If this is the reason, IMO it is pretty silly. You already say "please
> write in English" in the template message. If somebody can ignore that,
> they can certainly ignore this mystery meat message, too -- e.g. I had
> no idea what it meant and I doubt most other people understand "convert
> non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal?" as "please write in English" either.

The non-ASCII characters could be part of a Lisp backtrace (from a
byte-compiled function).  In that case, conversion to hex is a
reasonable thing to d.

Message #23 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, cyd <at> stupidchicken.com,
	Štěpán Němec <stepnem <at> gmail.com>
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 14:08:08 +0000

On 30 January 2011 14:01, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:
>
> The non-ASCII characters could be part of a Lisp backtrace (from a
> byte-compiled function).  In that case, conversion to hex is a
> reasonable thing to d.

Indeed, so it's sensible to mangle backtraces before including them
into an email buffer. That needn't be drawn to the user's attention
(though presumably it would help the maintainers to insert a comment
to the effect that the backtrace had been mangled?).

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org

Message #26 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Štěpán Němec <stepnem <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, cyd <at> stupidchicken.com, rrt <at> sc3d.org
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 15:19:35 +0100

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Štěpán Němec <stepnem <at> gmail.com>
>> Cc: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>,  7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,  rrt <at> sc3d.org
>> Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:48:46 +0100
>> 
>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:
>> 
>> > Actually, this was added in Emacs 20 or 21, when Emacs got support for
>> > multi-lingual editing.  the reason was to make sure bug reports are
>> > written in English and not in some other languages that maintainers
>> > could not command.  Also, various MUAs, even in Emacs, might convert
>> > non-ASCII characters into illegible mess.
>> 
>> If this is the reason, IMO it is pretty silly. You already say "please
>> write in English" in the template message. If somebody can ignore that,
>> they can certainly ignore this mystery meat message, too -- e.g. I had
>> no idea what it meant and I doubt most other people understand "convert
>> non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal?" as "please write in English" either.
>
> The non-ASCII characters could be part of a Lisp backtrace (from a
> byte-compiled function).  In that case, conversion to hex is a
> reasonable thing to d.

I don't see why mangling any kind of information would be reasonable,
unless of course you mean proper encoding of non-ascii content which any
functional MUA does, but that should be (and is) done automatically
without any kind of user intervention. In any case, this reasoning is
quite different from the one stated in your previous message (although
it doesn't make much more sense to me).

  Štěpán

Message #29 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, cyd <at> stupidchicken.com
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:26:59 -0500

> Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:33:02 +0000
> From: Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
> Cc: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>, 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> >  Also, various MUAs, even in Emacs, might convert
> > non-ASCII characters into illegible mess.
> 
> Then they should be fixed to encode the text properly and specify the
> encoding. It's a bit late in the day to be working around programs
> that can't cope with non-7-bit encodings!

The goal is to make dug reporting and analysis as simple and efficient
as possible.  Not to fix all the possible bugs that are unrelated to
the one being reported.

> > Maybe
> > some kind of list of allowed non-ASCII characters will be good enough.
> 
> It would be better than nothing, but the list will never be long
> enough.

We have Unicode character properties to help us out (see "Character
Properties" in the ELisp manual), and also charset properties.  So it
doesn't have to be a list of literal characters.

> For example, what's wrong with using symbols such as arrows or
> smileys, or, in your own example, ellipses?

That the fonts installed on the recipient's machine don't support
them?

Message #32 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Štěpán Němec <stepnem <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, cyd <at> stupidchicken.com, rrt <at> sc3d.org
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:42:04 -0500

> From: Štěpán Němec <stepnem <at> gmail.com>
> Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,  cyd <at> stupidchicken.com,  rrt <at> sc3d.org
> Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 15:19:35 +0100
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:
> 
> In any case, this reasoning is quite different from the one stated
> in your previous message

The previous message corrected an assumption that the request to use
English comes from the pure ASCII era.  This reasoning, by contrast,
tried to explain why asking for English does not guarantee 7-bit ASCII
text, even if the user strictly abides by that request.

> (although it doesn't make much more sense to me).

Would _any_ reasoning make sense to you in this matter?  If not, we
are having a religious argument, and then we better stop.

To make more sense out of it (hopefully), think about the various ways
a Lisp-level backtrace (or, indeed, any information from the Emacs
display) could be brought into the bug report (from the same Emacs
session, by copy-pasting via a windowing system, via a file, etc.),
and then try to imagine the set of possible encoding related mangling
that could cause it to be utterly illegible.

Anyway, it's time for me to bail out.  Someone asked a question why
report-emacs-bug does what it does.  I tried to answer, which
hopefully helped understand the reasons.  I don't have anything else
to say on this matter, and I really don't care if non-ASCII characters
will be allowed.  If a bug report uses non-trivial characters, its
submitter should consider the possibility that it will be read by a
smaller number of maintainers, in extreme situations not at all.

Message #35 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, cyd <at> stupidchicken.com
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:15:19 +0000

On 30 January 2011 14:26, Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> wrote:
>
> The goal is to make dug reporting and analysis as simple and efficient
> as possible.

Precisely, and currently report-emacs-bugs is getting in my way and
confusing me, and others. I'm a relatively expert user; what's a
novice supposed to make of this incomprehensible question? ("ASCII?
Hex? What's that? I just want to report a bug!")

There are many ways in which a bug report can fail to be useful to the
maintainers, most of which Emacs can't hope to detect. Currently, it
makes a ham-fisted attempt to detect a couple of types of problem
which aren't even demonstrated as being problems the maintainers
actually encounter. (How many mails did you get in non-English
languages before this check was introduced? How many backtraces were
unreadable (and how is a developer supposed to demangle a mangled
backtrace?)? How many times couldn't a developer read a message
because it used a character they didn't have a font for (and how easy
would it have been just to install such a font?)?

As it is, report-emacs-bug violates the maxim "Be liberal in what you
accept from others", which is especially important for bug reporting
(important as it also is to help users provide good bug reports), with
no obvious benefit to the maintainers.

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org

Message #38 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> IRO.UMontreal.CA>
To: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:58:17 -0500

>> Pretty much every time I use report-emacs-bug, I get the message
>> “Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal?” There are two problems here:
>> 
>> 1. From looking at the code in report-emacs-bug-hook, it really means
>> “non-ASCII characters”, as it looks for any non-7-bit character, not
>> just non-7-bit letters.
>> 
>> 2. In this age of UTF-8, and, for example, my use of smart-quotes-mode,
>> what do you have against non-ASCII characters? Perhaps you’d like to try
>> to make sure that mail to report-emacs-bug is in English, but for that
>> you should be using some form of linguistic analysis.

> Maybe this question dates from the days when email was ASCII only.  At
> the least, this check ought to only be applied to the mail headers (MIME
> is needed for non-ASCII in headers).

Why not drop it altogether?


        Stefan

Message #43 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>
To: Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> IRO.UMontreal.CA>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 10:05:20 -0500

Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> IRO.UMontreal.CA> writes:

>>> Pretty much every time I use report-emacs-bug, I get the message
>>> “Convert non-ASCII letters to hexadecimal?” There are two problems here:
>>> 
>>> 1. From looking at the code in report-emacs-bug-hook, it really means
>>> “non-ASCII characters”, as it looks for any non-7-bit character, not
>>> just non-7-bit letters.
>>> 
>>> 2. In this age of UTF-8, and, for example, my use of smart-quotes-mode,
>>> what do you have against non-ASCII characters? Perhaps you’d like to try
>>> to make sure that mail to report-emacs-bug is in English, but for that
>>> you should be using some form of linguistic analysis.
>
>> Maybe this question dates from the days when email was ASCII only.  At
>> the least, this check ought to only be applied to the mail headers (MIME
>> is needed for non-ASCII in headers).
>
> Why not drop it altogether?

Since no one has spoken up in defense of keeping the check, I've done
that.

Message #48 received at 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Reuben Thomas <rrt <at> sc3d.org>
To: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>
Cc: 7925 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: bug#7925: 23.2.91; report-emacs-bug doesn't like curly quotes
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 15:44:39 +0000

On 6 February 2011 15:05, Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com> wrote:
>
> Since no one has spoken up in defense of keeping the check, I've done
> that.

Thanks!

-- 
http://rrt.sc3d.org

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