Re: strange character "\f" found in source

[Mark Polesky]

Patrick McCarty wrote:

> Personally, I would not remove any of them.

!

> - The ones in COPYING are important in that they define
>   where the page breaks (form feeds) are.

Okay.

> - The ones in define-markup-commands.scm are used to
>   delimit new sections.

Okay, but there's no consistency -- they are used to delimit
4 sections out of 15:

  utility functions
  geometric shapes
  space
  importing graphics
  basic formatting
  property
  files
  fonts
  symbols
  \f
  glyphs
  the note command
  translating
  \f
  brackets
  \f
  Delayed markup evaluation
  \f
  Markup list commands

And why, out of the 70 or so other files in scm/ should
this be the only one to use them?

> - The one in emacsclient.patch is part of the patch
>   (obviously) for emacs/emacsclient.  So if you removed
>   the formfeed, the patch might not apply cleanly.

That's what I figured.

> I think using formfeeds in source code is fine.  And some
> projects use them liberally: Guile's source contains
> hundreds if not thousands of formfeed characters, for example.

Well, if we had been doing that from the beginning it might
be different. But our source only has ten formfeed characters,
six of which (it seems) aren't even open to debate. So I think
consistency trumps the
other arguments in this case. I'd rather
remove 4 characters than retrofit 3300 files.

What do you think?
- Mark

p.s. Also -- the little character-sized rectangle, seemingly in
     the middle of nowhere, still looks like a mistake to my
     eyes. Even after I understand its potential use...