Re: String encoding in json.c

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Philipp Stephani <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2017 21:42:54 +0000
> Cc: address@hidden
> 
>  And the fact that the internal representation is documented doesn't
>  mean we can draw the conclusions like that. 
> 
> Why? Clearly we can make use of documented information?

Because we are not Microsoft: we do document some internal details
when we think this will help Lisp programmers and people who work on
the core.  We even have a chapter named "Internals" in the manual, and
that definitely doesn't mean those descriptions are a contract that
cannot be changed at will.

IOW, the ELisp manual is no more "official" and "reliable" than
comments in the code.

>  For starters, the
>  documentation doesn't tell all the story: the 2-byte representation of
>  raw bytes is not described there.
> 
> What's the 2-byte representation?

See CHAR_BYTE8_HEAD_P and its users.

(I didn't respond to your other points because I don't see this
discussion going anywhere where I could be of use.)