Re: Guidelines for the "symbol" syntax class

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 01/04/2016 02:51 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> With things like Foo:Bar (or Foo.bar or what have you), there are indeed
> conflicting definitions of "symbol" and there's usually not a single one
> that works everywhere.

But as a major mode author, I *do* have to pick one. That's the main 
choice I'm asking about.

Splitting Foo::Bar into two symbols is a done decision (`::' is a scope 
resolution operator anyway). Still undecided whether the symbol-at-point 
at instance variable (@var) should include the @ sign, and whether the 
symbol-at-point at a Symbol literal (:symbol) should include the colon. 
And what to do about syntax-sugared Symbol literals (symbol: value).

> IOW you can't expect Emacs's notion of "symbol"
> to cover all the use cases.  More specifically, Emacs's notion of symbol
> can only be used as a stepping stone on which to construct the things
> you need, on a case by case basis.

Naturally, the use cases left suboptimal by the eventual choice would 
need to be handled specially.