Re: Confused by y-or-n-p

[Gregory Heytings]

> > > > Do you have any evidence to back up the claim that this has happened?
> > >
> > > It happened with y-or-n-p; it would not have happened with the above 
> > > guideline.
>
> > I don't think the second part of that sentence logically follows from 
> > the first.
>
> I think I was the first person to complain about it.  An entry in 
> etc/NEWS would probably not have come to my attention, since I don't 
> check it regularly.  But a posting on emacs-devel is something I would 
> have noticed.

The proposal was not to mention such changes in NEWS (which is already the 
case), it was to use the existing criterion used to add entries in NEWS 
("Any change that matters to end-users should have an entry in etc/NEWS", 
see CONTRIBUTE) as a basis for an explicit guideline: "In principle, any 
such change should, unless it is an added feature, either require setting 
a variable to be enabled, or be reversible by setting a variable."

(The word "should" here has the meaning of RFC 2119: "This word [...] 
mean[s] that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to 
ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be understood and 
carefully weighed before choosing a different course.")