Re: evaluating numbers

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Nov 9, 2019, at 20:48, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> I'm not questioning the default, I'm trying to understand a feature and it's 
>> default setting. Apologies if that takes time.
> 
> I'm happy to explain what is still unclear.  It seemed to me that the
> latest questions all aim at asking why not do something other than the
> default, they don't ask clarifications about the feature, which is
> really quite simple.  Apologies if this is my misunderstanding.

As I just replied to Stephan, there is a big cognitive gap here. And it's not 
easy to wrap my mind around it.

>>> If you want to suggest a different way of looking for a suitable font, 
>>> please do.
>> 
>> Maybe not "look for a suitable font" but set a default font for that action. 
>> There is a finite number of standard fonts on systems that support emacs.
> 
> Unfortunately, the last sentence is in general incorrect.  The reality
> is that no font (at least none that I know of) supports all of
> Unicode, so we will need to have several fonts from which to select.
> And that is tricky if you want the result work on all platforms.

I understand that.

So allow me to get back to my original issue, it's a repetition of what I've 
written already but please bear with me.

65 (#o101, #x41, ?A)

is perfect

Not so long ago I had

1114111 (#o4177777, #x10ffff, ?� )

and it was fine, because the glitch at the end meant to me that the font did 
not cover that code point. I've known that for a long time.

Now I have 

1114111 (#o4177777, #x10ffff)

And I even have

232 (#o350, #xe8)

even though 232 is clearly covered by my default fonts.

The issue here is that I can't know for sure that there is a corresponding 
glyph or not.

For "discoverability" (or "cognitive gap reduction") purposes, I'd rather have 
something like

1114111 (#o4177777, #x10ffff, t)

232 (#o350, #xe8, t)

or something similar where t is the value of characterp for that integer when 
the integer is above the value of eval-expression-print-maximum-character.

That way I *know* when an integer is a character and when it is not. And I can 
find ways to look for it separately.

Would that break things ?


Jean-Christophe Helary
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http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune