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

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2021 17:25:56 +0000
> Cc: Phil Sainty <psainty@orcon.net.nz>, joaotavora@gmail.com,
>   emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
> 
> I thought that large features weren't being accepted for Emacs 28 any
> more?  These "shorthands" are a gigantic feature which disrupt our way
> of developing Emacs.

The shorthands don't disrupt anything unless they are used.  And using
them is completely opt-in, and intended for specific situations where
it is justified.  Of course, any feature can be abused, but the blame
is on those who abuse it.

> Can we please delay the release of Emacs 28.1 until we have these tool
> enhancements in place?

I see no reason for such a delay, given that our tools are already
imperfect.  We should improve our tools, of course, but there's
nothing in shorthands that justifies delaying Emacs 28.1.

> And until that point, have a moratorium on using shorthands?

I'm not aware of any plans to use shorthands in Emacs itself.  People
talk and discuss these possibilities, and that's okay.  But that's
just talk at this point, certainly for Emacs 28.

> > > Is whatever we're gaining actually worth the resulting obfuscation?
> 
> > Time will tell.  It currently sounds like its worth it, but as with
> > any such feature, we could be wrong.
> 
> And if we are wrong, what then?

Then we will avoid using it, or maybe even recommend that no one does.
And perhaps replace shorthands with something better.  But we aren't
there anymore, and I think your sense of a catastrophe is unjustified,
if not exaggerated.

> > They are not the real reason, they are just the way to explain the
> > feature in simple terms.  The real reason is to make namespace
> > management easier.
> 
> I don't think, on balance, it will do this.

Time will tell.