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

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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: 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

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