Re: Upcoming loss of usability of Emacs source files and Emacs.

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 06/23/2015 09:39 PM, Nikolai Weibull wrote:

> Reading a German text where they „quote like this“ looks really weird
> to an American or a Swede as well.  But we’re not even talking about
> differing quotation styles.  We’re talking about the same symbols
> (modulo the different code points), just rendered either as a nice
> piece of wrapping around the quoted text, or as four fencepost that
> keep the quoted text from walking on the lawn.

You say "nice", I say "weird". In source code, at least.

The fact that I'd have to enable electric-quote-mode and see Emacs 
insert different quotes than those I've just typed, doesn't help either. 
This might be the main reason for my opposition.

> That’s because the book was written in American English, not English
> English.  In American English, single quotes are used when quotes are
> nested.

FWIW, Emacs codebase leans toward American Engligh. And it's also the 
dialect of English most prevalent in the world, for better or worse.

> It’s (generally) the other way around in English English.

I suppose I haven't read that many books in UK English. Lewis Carroll 
seems to disagree, too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alice's_Adventures_Under_Ground_-_Lewis_Carroll_-_British_Library_Add_MS_46700_f45v.jpg

> Regarding apostrophes, they /are/ the same, even though they server
> different purposes.

Looks are not that important. If anything, only seeing "single quotes" 
used as apostrophes can leave an impression that they're never used as 
quotation marks.