Re: [PATCH] Desktop mode saves mark-ring too verbosely

[Kelly Dean]

Ivan Shmakov wrote:
>> +(defvar desktop-var-serdes-funs
[snip]
> aren’t “serialization” and “deserialization” often
> referred to as “writing” and “reading” in the dialects of Lisp?

Yes, but I intentionally avoided those terms because this table is for 
functions that don't necessarily just print and read in the normal Lisp sense. 
E.g. mark-ring contains markers, and a marker contains both a position and a 
reference to the relevant buffer, so simply printing mark-ring in the Lisp 
sense would involve printing both the positions and the buffer references, but 
its serializer function in this table outputs only the positions. The entire 
point of my patch is to avoid the Lisp sense of printing, because printing the 
buffer references is far too verbose.

> It doesn’t look like a common abbreviation,

It's a common abbreviation for parallel↔serial conversion circuits, which are 
reasonably analogous to functions that convert program data to/from a text 
stream. And circuitry is a domain for which it's common to share terminology 
with software.

> so I guess
> “serializer, deserializer” should rather be spelled in full.

This table is something that only programmers, not users, will need to 
understand or modify, so using a technical abbreviation isn't a problem. Emacs 
already has abbreviated names such as ⌜fboundp⌝ and ⌜fmakunbound⌝ for 
programmer-only things, instead of ⌜function-bound-predicate⌝ and 
⌜function-make-unbound⌝. So if anything, ⌜funs⌝ isn't abbreviated _enough_. ;-)

Spelling out ⌜desktop-variable-serialization-deserialization-functions⌝ would 
be ironic, considering the purpose of my patch.

BTW, you quoted only me, but you CCed only Stefan. I almost missed your 
message, until I checked the mailing list.