Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 9ce1d38: Use curved quotes in core elisp diagnostics

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Paul.

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 09:45:38AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > Sorry, you've lost me.  Which philosophical issue would that be?

> It's illustrated by your next comment:

> > you're conflating the two different issues of non-ascii characters
> > and non-working characters.

> We disagree about this.  They're not orthogonal issues.  They're so closely 
> related that they're almost the same issue.

Well, as I said, I edit texts with non-ascii characters frequently, and
don't experience any particular difficulty with them.  Having to type in
a decimal/hex code for a non-working character (or, even worse, having
to look up an input method for it) just stops me in my tracks.  An
example is when I reply to Óscar, "Ó" being outside my working character
set.

> Emacs currently makes it harder to deal with non-ASCII and/or
> non-working characters than it could.

Could you give an example of this (pertaining, preferably, to non-ascii
working characters)?  Thinking about it, maybe having to use Latin keys
in lots of bindings when ones keyboard's preferred layout is non-Latin
could be quite tiresome.  But I've never seen anybody complaining about
this.

> Restricting our source code to ASCII and/or working characters has
> helped us put our heads in the sand about the problem.

Whatever problem that might be, the solution surely cannot be
artificially to inflict it on ourselves.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).