Re: master 72b1379f079: Increase `emacs-lisp-docstring-fill-column` to 72

[Po Lu]

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> Indeed.  I proposed a solution: patches welcome.
>
> If we need to fix it in some other way for mobile displays in the
> meanwhile, please work on that.  Info and many other things in Emacs
> wrap to 72 columns, so we are already dealing with that problem.
>
> It will take a very long time indeed before any significant proportion
> of our docstrings have been reflowed to this new default, so we still
> have plenty of time.

My point was that the circumstances of this change demonstrate that
December's debacle was completely lost on the parties involved.  It
should have taught us (again) that users do not take kindly to being
surprised by arbitrary choices a handful of individuals decide to
implement that they were not consulted about, yet within two months of
the event a much more wide-reaching change is installed in an identical
manner, of which criticism is met by an ultimatum to either complete a
task that stands little chance of success (designing and securing the
universal adoption of a new doc string format), or accept the change as
a fact of life.

I trust many people will agree with me that increasing this variable
from 64 to 72 is an exclusively aesthetic change, driven by personal
opinions formed towards the appearance of doc strings, and perhaps in
the belief that a lack of change is likely to be perceived as
stagnation.  In truth, there has been _nothing_ to suggest that the
width of doc strings has inconvenienced our users in any manner, and
likewise none to suggest widening it will bring about an indispensable
improvement.

As December's affair should have demonstrated, such arbitrary actions,
when normalized, give rise to a neurotic user-base constantly at each
other's throats, apprehensive of the next update to Emacs which might
break their configurations or interfere with their habits in new and
unseen ways, and belligerent in their defense of their existing
practices and preferences.  I mean this literally--Eshel Yaron's blog
post being one example, numerous others exist also, such as the sea of
acrimony formed on Reddit in response to a package developer's request
not to use Emacs 30, which was not so much related to Emacs as it was a
collection of accusations of rudeness, immaturity, and bitter general
faultfinding, or the hostility that radiates from every discussion on
the subject of better or worse defaults, compilation failures induced by
updating to new versions of Emacs, and the like.  Worse yet, I can sense
myself warming to them by the hour.

As for Info and "many other things", they are not doc strings, and
should not be factors in decisions regarding them.