Re: On language-dependent defaults for character-folding

[Óscar Fuentes]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> > But in the case of 2 characters, a literal n is present in the buffer,
>> > so not finding it would be a miss, don't you think?
>> 
>> Then you are not thinking as an Spaniard, but as someone who is versed
>> on character representations by computers.
>
> Aren't there Spaniards who are also versed on character
> representations by computers?

Maybe less than the 0.1% of the population, but yes. Even those may
prefer a default that works for them as Spaniards rather that a default
that works for them as users familiarised with text encoding.

>> In practice, n matching ñ (the composed one) will not be a big issue,
>> since it will happen rarely. Same for the rest of compositions that
>> looks like ñ but are not "the" ñ. If someone complains, we can explain
>> what the problem is and that we opted for handling such compositions as
>> groups of characters.
>
> So you do think this, too, is not a problem?

Do we have resources for setting a default that works as the expected by
each and every user all the time? (If possible at all)

>> > What about finding ⒜ when searching for a, don't you want to find
>> > that?  This is not specific to any language.
>> 
>> That would be nice, sometimes. If I search for (a), should it match ⒜?
>
> I don't know.  What do you think?

It depends. It's like `a' matching `á' but on steroids. Sometimes I'll
find it convenient and sometimes inconvenient. Those are different cases
than doing something that is plain wrong for a set of users and
convenient for others.

>> But we are digressing. Eli, you are missing the point. If you wish to
>> set Emacs defaults as per the convenience of people who think of text as
>> a series of codes at the expense of breaking basic expectations of those
>> who see text as... text, well, frankly, I don't think it is a good
>> decision.
>
> I was trying to develop a dialogue which will help me and you
> understand where your resistance begins and where it ends.  I think
> it's important to do that to better understand the issues, but if you
> don't want that, we can stop any moment.

I think that I explained it many times, but here it goes again:
character folding, as implemented today, might be convenient for some
users, but a glaring bug for others, so its default status (on the
release) should be chosen on accordance. What's so difficult to
understand about that?