Re: Upcoming loss of usability of Emacs source files and Emacs.

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Dmitry Gutov writes:
 > On 06/24/2015 09:55 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > > I think Richard will tell you differently, that "competition" with
 > > other editors, languages, or formats is never a reason for Emacs to do
 > > something.  Cooperation (portability or compatibility) often is,
 > > though.  But you'll have to ask him to get an authoritative statement.
 > 
 > Again, you're holding on to the wrong word.

Then don't use it.  That's you talking past me, not the other way
around.

 > Point is, we're trying to solve a minor problem that others have
 > solved before.

Then post a pointer to those solutions or discussions.  You can't
assume your readers are so familiar with them that the word
"competition" will cause useful associations.

But AFAIK, no, this is not a problem that others have solved.  I've
seen the generic "shall we use Unicode characters as syntax" discussed
a few times, and to date the conclusion has always been "we can't
count on Unicode to be available, so we can't."  That's not a
solution, that's postponement.  And Emacs doesn't have that problem,
although apparently some platforms supported by Emacs do (specificly,
the Windows command line).