bug#31231: Symbol search broken in NEWS and ChangeLogs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>
> Cc: 31231@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2018 23:16:09 +0300
> 
> >> But how these text terminals display Unicode quotes in Info manuals?
> >
> > Info manuals are displayed by an Info reader, and each Info reader has
> > its own solution for this problem (generally, substitution of ASCII
> > characters for undisplayable Unicode ones).
> 
> Does the Emacs Info reader implement such solution?

Emacs itself does, not just in Info.  The standalone Info reader (part
of the Texinfo package) has a slightly different solution.

> > I was talking about reading NEWS in a general-purpose text-browsing
> > program, such as Less.  It is IMO not a good idea to prevent people
> > from doing that and requiring them to only read NEWS and ChangeLog
> > files in Emacs.
> 
> When I tried to read NEWS using Less in xterm, I can see all these
> quotes in UTF-8, for example, the quotes in “like this”.

I guess that's because your text terminal supports UTF-8.

> Every symbol in NEWS quoted by either ‘straight’ quoting style 'like this',
> or ‘grave’ `like this'.  For example, for 'electric-quote-replace-double'
> starting Isearch with ‘M-s .’, and repeating the same symbol search in the
> source code.

I'm asking what us the problem not to use "M-s ." in those cases, and
instead to look for the symbol as a literal string.  I think in a file
like NEWS this shouldn't yield too many false hits.