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PSA: please stop using weird symbol prefixes
From: |
Paul Rankin |
Subject: |
PSA: please stop using weird symbol prefixes |
Date: |
Mon, 11 May 2015 16:18:44 +1000 |
Lately I've seen a lot of seemingly random mode symbol prefixes, e.g. a mode
called `foobar-mode` will use `fb:next-item` and elsewhere `fblatex:export-new`
or perhaps `foobar/end-of-tree` etc. etc.
1. This approach grates against the Elisp coding conventions...
> • You should choose a short word to distinguish your program from
> other Lisp programs. The names of all global symbols in your
> program, that is the names of variables, constants, and functions,
> should begin with that chosen prefix. Separate the prefix from the
> rest of the name with a hyphen, ‘-’. This practice helps avoid
> name conflicts, since all global variables in Emacs Lisp share the
> same name space, and all functions share another name space(1).
> Use two hyphens to separate prefix and name if the symbol is not
> meant to be used by other packages.
-- from (info "(elisp) Coding Conventions")
2. It breaks `custom-unlispify-tag-names` which is used to display customize
pages without the mode prefix.
3. It breaks autocompletion, at least in the mini-buffer, where the user
expects <space> translated to hyphen to work as a universal delimiter.
4. Most importantly, it breaks user expectation long established by code that
properly follows the conventions that symbols ought to take the form
PREFIX-some-symbol.
- PSA: please stop using weird symbol prefixes,
Paul Rankin <=