Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 9ffb6ce 5/5: Quoting fixes in lisp/international and lisp/leim

[Paul Eggert]

On 09/01/2015 08:39 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> - The `...' markup (and it is markup) is ambiguous.
It certainly is (and always has been, alas), but before jumping into 
improving it, could you explain what ambiguities you'd like to resolve 
with an improved markup?

Currently `...' markup in docstrings is used for:

  * Symbols, e.g., `load-file'

  * Info nodes, e.g., `(emacs)Lisp Libraries'.

  * URLs, e.g., `http://bama.ua.edu/cgi-bin/man-cgi?lp'

  * Characters, e.g., `&', ` '.

  * Key sequences, e.g., `C-x ESC O P'.

  * Strings, e.g., `69'.

  * Regular expressions, e.g., `\\(_P\\|_PROTO\\)'.

  * English phrases, e.g., `close in spirit', `things'.

  * Lisp patterns, e.g., `(ATOM . ELLIPSIS)'.

  * Lisp code, e.g., `(thai nil nil (mark))'.

  * Non-Lisp code, e.g., `ls -lR'.

  * Probably some other stuff I’ve missed.

Most of these items are sometimes put in block quotations rather than in 
quote symbols, if they are long enough.

So, when removing ambiguity, how many categories would you like to put 
the above examples in?  And how should the different categories be 
rendered on plain-text consoles and on graphical displays?  I sort of 
have the impression that by “markup” you mean “things that should turn 
into links”, but maybe you mean “things that should be rendered in 
fixed-width font if we have a nice display”, or maybe there are two or 
even more kinds of markup that you have in mind.