Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 26b56dc: Fix some single quotes in documentation

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/14/2016 12:29 PM, John Wiegley wrote:
> Could we render the quotes the way that we currently do for Elisp
> documentation?

Yes, that could be done. We'd need an escape mechanism for the rare 
cases where quotes should not be replaced, as in the following lines:

NEWS:66:unless gfile is explicitly requested via 
--with-file-notification='gfile'.
NEWS:576:(add-to-list 'display-buffer-alist
NEWS:577:     '("^\\*shell\\*$" . (display-buffer-same-window))).
NEWS:639:folding in the middle of a search by typing ‘M-s '’.
NEWS:1458:for straight apostrophes 'like this', and to ‘grave’ for grave 
accent
NEWS:1459:and apostrophe `like this'.  The default value nil acts like 
‘curve’
NEWS:1745:apostrophe `like-this'.  The new style looks better on today’s 
displays.
NEWS:1747:into documentation by typing ` and '.  Outside Electric Quote 
mode,


If we use substitute-command-keys (simplest), the above lines would turn 
into:

unless gfile is explicitly requested via 
--with-file-notification=\='gfile\='.
(add-to-list \='display-buffer-alist
     \='("^\\*shell\\*$" . (display-buffer-same-window))).
folding in the middle of a search by typing ‘M-s \='’.
for straight apostrophes \='like this\=', and to `grave' for grave accent
and apostrophe \=`like this\='.  The default value nil acts like `curve'
apostrophe \=`like-this\='.  The new style looks better on today's displays.
into documentation by typing \=` and \='.  Outside Electric Quote mode,


Plus, this line:

before, characters preceded by \= are output as-is.


would need to be changed to this:

before, characters preceded by \=\= are output as-is.


The above would all run afoul of Eli's desire to use other programs to 
read etc/NEWS as-is, though.

I'm afraid that straight quoting 'like this' is the simplest way out of 
this mess. It is not a great solution, but it is the simplest and the 
other approaches all have problems that may be worse. This is why the 
patch I originally installed today used straight quoting. How about if 
we simply go back to it? I.e., revert commit 
4235d2d9eaa3b64d3172f6c60f1e71704795af89 and then move on.