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PSA: please stop using weird symbol prefixes


From: Paul Rankin
Subject: PSA: please stop using weird symbol prefixes
Date: Mon, 11 May 2015 16:18:44 +1000

Lately I've seen a lot of seemingly random mode symbol prefixes, e.g. a mode 
called `foobar-mode` will use `fb:next-item` and elsewhere `fblatex:export-new` 
or perhaps `foobar/end-of-tree` etc. etc.

1. This approach grates against the Elisp coding conventions...

> • You should choose a short word to distinguish your program from
>   other Lisp programs.  The names of all global symbols in your
>   program, that is the names of variables, constants, and functions,
>   should begin with that chosen prefix.  Separate the prefix from the
>   rest of the name with a hyphen, ‘-’.  This practice helps avoid
>   name conflicts, since all global variables in Emacs Lisp share the
>   same name space, and all functions share another name space(1).
>   Use two hyphens to separate prefix and name if the symbol is not
>   meant to be used by other packages.

-- from (info "(elisp) Coding Conventions")

2. It breaks `custom-unlispify-tag-names` which is used to display customize 
pages without the mode prefix.

3. It breaks autocompletion, at least in the mini-buffer, where the user 
expects <space> translated to hyphen to work as a universal delimiter.

4. Most importantly, it breaks user expectation long established by code that 
properly follows the conventions that symbols ought to take the form 
PREFIX-some-symbol.




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