Re: [Emacs-diffs] master b533552 2/5: Documentation fixes re quotes

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 09/04/2015 01:47 AM, Paul Eggert wrote:

> Ah, sorry, I thought the context was the current Emacs master, not Emacs
> after some further changes are applied to it.

The context is what Emacs master had been not too long ago, as well as 
what it'll most likely be in the future.

> In the current master
> most of the problems you mentioned are not a big deal in practice, as
> typically there's immediate visual feedback when one types the wrong
> quote.

You keep saying "not a big deal in practice". The original problem 
(straight quotes) never was a "big deal in practice", yet you saw fit to 
introduce many changes to fix it. Fixing it while keeping many known 
(and new) shortcomings doesn't make sense.

> It is true that in some more-complicated cases this breaks down,
> but this is a nearly inevitable consequence of any markup syntax that
> uses quotes to represent so many different concepts, regardless of
> whether the syntax uses ASCII or curved quotes.

Not if the programmer looks at the output (a Help buffer, for example). 
The output will necessarily be "correct". However, like I wrote, if the 
output is the same as input by default, looking at the output won't help 
you find problems.

> You are correct in that if we came up with a different markup syntax
> that was more systematic and organized, many of these more-complicated
> cases would work better.

Doing everything better is not a necessary condition. Doing only some of 
the things better might suffice.