bug#30393: 24.4; cperl-mode: indentation failure

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2018 12:49:30 +0000
> Cc: dgutov@yandex.ru, npostavs@users.sourceforge.net,
>   monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA, 30393@debbugs.gnu.org
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
> 
> > This text is not needed.  The original text, which you deleted,
> > described how to avoid a real problem; if that problem no longer
> > exists, we should just delete that text.  If that problem does exist
> > in some modes, we should leave that text as it was, with a better
> > description of what modes are still subject to these problems.
> 
> > But describing something that is no longer done by Emacs is just waste
> > of paper.
> 
> Perhaps the proposed fix was somewhat prolix ("long winded").  But, in a
> sense, we're providing a new feature, the ability to write syntactically
> correct parens.  If we don't mention this, people won't notice.
> Occasionally somebody will remember the previous restriction, try to
> look it up in the manual, and end up puzzled.
> 
> How about a compromise, and replacing those two long paragraphs with a
> simple sentence such as:
> 
>     From Emacs 27.1, you can write opening parens at column zero without
>     problems.
> 
> > Overall, I must say I'm confused regarding the purpose of this patch.
> > What does it try to accomplish?
> 
> To note that the documented previous restrictions on parens in column 0
> no longer hold.

The right place for such stuff is in NEWS.

> I suppose we really want to mark this part of the manual as obsolete,
> but we've got no mechanism for doing this.  Besides,
> open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start still has _some_ functionality.

The variable should have some minimal description with a note that
using it nowadays is seldom needed.  That should be enough to drive
your point home, I think.