RE: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Drew Adams]

> > Were identical straight quotes (') used in NEWS before you used
> > them?  I don't think so. Except maybe for the occasional typo.
> 
> They were used, and they weren't typos.

Show us some that were not typos, please.

> Straight quoting is an alternative style of quoting, which is
> valid in its own right.

Valid for what?  What yesterday's lunch ended up as is valid
for something, surely.  Everything is valid for something.
Validity is always relative to some standard, or spec.

The only reasonable notion of "valid" for Emacs is "valid for Emacs",
which means whatever Emacs Dev decides it means.

> >> Although grave quotes are popular Emacs source code they have
> >> never been the only style for all text,
> >
> > In Emacs they have been.  Counter-examples?  Or did you mean all
> > text anywhere, including outside of Emacs?
> 
> I meant within the text files in the Emacs git repository. Although
> grave quoting (with ` and ') has historically been more popular than
> straight quoting (with ' and '), 

Not just "more popular".  That was the Emacs _convention_.  Since
Day One (AFAIK).

> both forms are used, 

Where?  Emacs GIT?  Hardly a great reference, if you are looking
for what Emacs convention has been.

> and straight quotes are not merely something that I just now added.

You added them a while ago, I guess.

> In particular, both quoting styles were used in etc/NEWS even before
> my changes of this week.  Last week's commit 
> 985dacfa0f0186531fdae13718d720cf7e27425f of etc/NEWS contains at least
> a dozen uses of straight quoting (I got tired of counting after
> reaching a dozen). Admittedly straight quoting was a minority style,
> but these were not typos.

I discount anything recent.  The whole convention thing has been
tossed on its head.  You wouldn't happen to know who started down
that road, would you?

>  >> for example, the NEWS entry for Emacs 1.4 (in etc/NEWS.1-17), circa
>  >> 1985, uses straight quotes for its only quoted string, presumably to
>  >> distinguish the quotes from the grave accents elsewhere in the entry.
>  > ... Dunno what you mean by "its only quoted string",
> 
> I meant the only quoted string in the NEWS entry for Emacs 1.4. There is
> just one such string, which you numbered "5" in your list. (Your list
> included NEWS entries for other Emacs releases.)

Right. I checked the whole file etc/NEWS.1-17, which contains NEWS for
releases 1.1 through 1.17.  5 occurrences of '...'; 345 occurrences of
`...'.  70 to 1 ratio.  Five typos.  Hardly "an alternative style of
quoting" used by Emacs.

> Again, I concede that straight quoting was a minority style in
> NEWS entries, but it was a perfectly respectable style

Not much of a concession.  Typos, not a "minority style" for Emacs.

Again, "perfectly respectable", like "valid", is defined by Emacs Dev.
It's about a convention, and one set by Emacs Dev, not just by some
outside notion of popularity or frequency of use.

> and it was not just "typos".

I disagree about that.  Based even on just the file you pointed us to.
See my previous mail for details.

> > You think they are a better choice; OK, we got that.
> 
> It's not a matter of my personal preference. It's the GNU coding
> style, which reflects a reasonable consensus on user-visible text.

What is the _GNU Emacs_ quoting style?  It WAS `...'.  Now it is
apparently up for grabs.  Based notably on your efforts to change
it and your appeals to other styles.