Re: [PATCH] Unicode Lisp reader escapes

[Aidan Kehoe]

 Ar an dara lá de mí Bealtaine, scríobh Eli Zaretskii: 

 > >  > I don't know what you mean: the other objections were technical as
 > >  > well.
 > > 
 > > I would rate questions of aesthetics ``ugliness'' and prose style as
 > > non-technical. I don't propose to impose that judgement on you, but I do
 > > think it reasonable.
 > 
 > The discussion was about quite a few technical issues, only one of
 > which was aesthetics.

I proposed a working patch, Richard Stallman suggested an alternative
approach on the grounds that having both '\u' and '\U' was ugly. (He made
that clear after asking what the reason for having both of them was.) He
then commented that the functionality of the patch would be available in GNU
Emacs once the Unicode branch was merged, apparently ignoring what I had
written on that in my first mail.

Stefan Monnier commented that workarounds were available; that was more
relevant comment than objection, IMO. 

Jonathan Yavner then objected to Richard’s objection, on the basis that my
already submitted patch followed a widely-implemented standard that
Richard’s alternative didn’t.

Miles Bader proposed an alternative to my patch, without objecting, to which
I didn’t follow up, because I wanted to see how people would react to
Jonathan’s mentioning of the existing standardisation of the escape.

Oliver Scholz said that the syntax for \u and \x should be entirely in
parallel “I[h]NSHO.”

And that is what had been posted directly in relation to my patch (as
opposed to in reaction to Richard’s proposed alterative) when you said that
the other objections were technical as well.

It seems to me that the only objections there are Richard’s, on the grounds
of ugliness, and Oliver’s, on the unexplained grounds of what I imagine is
his individual philosophy. I’d love to know what other objections you saw
before your posting; my email etiquette is far from perfect, and feedback is
always welcome.

 > >  > ``Full of bugs''?
 > > 
 > > Indeed; each READCHAR can call arbitrary Lisp, so something like
 > > 
 > >     case 'M':
 > >       c = READCHAR;
 > >       if (c != '-')
 > >    error ("Invalid escape character syntax");
 > >       c = READCHAR;
 > >       if (c == '\\')
 > >    c = read_escape (readcharfun, 0, byterep);
 > >       return c | meta_modifier;
 > > 
 > > has two clear bugs in eight lines. 
 > 
 > Yeah, right.  If you want your suggestions and opinions to be
 > considered seriously, my advice is to drop the attitude.  But I won't
 > impose that advice on you.

I would refer you to Kenichi Handa’s reply to that mail (that is, to
address@hidden ) for pointers on how to write what,
IM, especially Humble this time, O, is a much more constructive answer.

Best regards, 

        Aidan
-- 
Aidan Kehoe, http://www.parhasard.net/