Re: character syntax fixes needed

[Richard Stallman]

There are usually good reasons to follow standards.  That's why we
usually follow them.  But that's not the issue I'm talking about.

What I'm telling you is that the standards are not authorities.  We do
not *have to* follow them.  Arguments that presume that the standard
is an authority we must obey are simply invalid.  The decision about
whether to follow any given standard on any given issue is a practical
decision.

Telling us that "Unicode says XYZ" is an argument in favor of doing
XYZ.  It is not an open-and-shut decision.

By the way, can anyone find a copy of the original announcement
of the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable?  It provides a good
example of how we sometimes decide not to follow a standard, and
was also funny, so it would be nice to publish it again.

    Are you abandoning Unicode-based Emacs?

I still want a future version of Emacs to use primarily Unicode.
My views on this issue are unchanged.

A Unicode-based Emacs means an Emacs whose character codes are mostly
those of Unicode, and which works more or less according to Unicode
specifications.  It does not mean an Emacs that slavishly obeys
whatever Unicode says.  We don't slavishly obey standards.