Re: A simple solution to "Upcoming loss of usability ..."

[Paul Eggert]

Dmitry Gutov wrote:
> > Whatever heuristics we use are likely to be wrong for many real-world
> > uses in Elisp code.
>
> font-lock rules don't have to be about heuristics. The conversion can be as
> straight as we want it to me.

No straightforward conversion will work, I'm afraid.

> > Many uses of grave accent in Elisp strings,
> > characters, and comments are intended to be grave accent, not left
> > quote.  Similarly for apostrophe and right quote.  It's unlikely that
> > any easy-to-explain heuristic based on font-lock will distinguish among
> > the uses reliably.
>
> It has been established already that we need an escaping syntax, too.

Sorry, I'm not following.  This would be a new escape syntax for Elisp strings? 
 How would it work?  For example, would \` and \' have different meaning in 
strings than they do in character literals?  When exactly would these escapes be 
transformed to user-preferred quote characters?  Although I have already 
explored solutions along these lines and none of them worked well, perhaps you 
have ideas that will improve them.