Re: Do shorthands break basic tooling (tags, grep, etc)? (was Re: Shorthands have landed on master)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2021 13:28:11 +1300
> From: Phil Sainty <psainty@orcon.net.nz>
> Cc: acm@muc.de, joaotavora@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On 2021-10-02 02:00, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> >> From: Phil Sainty <psainty@orcon.net.nz>
> >> Major usability issues caused by things not being what they appear
> >> to be?  Not to put too finer point on it, but that is precisely what
> >> this thread has been about from the beginning.
> > 
> > No, because shorthands are known to Lisp.  They aren't a display-time
> > feature.
> 
> Several usability issues arising from shorthands have been clearly
> described by multiple people during this thread.  Breaking basic tooling
> *is* a usability problem.  Symbols not existing by the names used in the
> code *is* a usability problem.

There's a huge difference between breaking literal searches for
symbols by text-searching tools, and breaking basic Emacs commands
because the name the user sees and types is not known to Emacs.

> >> I absolutely agree that you are not responsible for irresponsible acts
> >> of others, but I don't think it was at all unreasonable to raise these
> >> concerns.
> > 
> > Sure, just don't raise them with us.
> 
> I was advocating for the removal of a new feature from Emacs Lisp -- 
> this
> is the only place I could do that.

I see no reason to remove this feature.  The issues raised here are
all manageable as long as we use this only where and as intended.