Re: master ff4de1b: Fix quoting style in Lisp comments

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Cc: dgutov@yandex.ru,  monnier@iro.umontreal.ca,  stefan@marxist.se,
>   juri@linkov.net,  rudalics@gmx.at,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2021 16:12:05 +0200
> 
> >> (And when it comes to commit messages, I don't think we should have a
> >> convention -- it just doesn't matter, and people should use whatever
> >> they want to.)
> >
> > We produce ChangeLog files from that.
> >
> > And if we allow people to do what they want, then we have that
> > already, so I see no reason to argue about conventions no one will
> > follow.
> 
> You were the one that brought up commit messages, and I just re-stated
> my position that we don't need to have a convention there (and you seem
> to be agreeing here).

No, I don't.  I think commit log messages should use '..', as any
other plain text.

> NEWS, CONTRIBUTE and other files of a similar ilk should use '...'.
> .el/.c files should use `...' (when talking about Lisp symbols).

Which other files?  I'd like this to be specific, to avoid having this
kind of dispute in the future.  There were several people who said
they want to revert to `..' everywhere.

> >> and if we decide to move to '...', we
> >> should do so everywhere in those files: Both doc strings and comments.
> >
> > That is impossible, because doc strings must still use `...'.
> 
> We'd have to change the machinery to do the same thing with '...' as we
> today do with `...', of course.  (But note that I'm not advocating for
> this.)

Then let's drop this part, there's enough noise in the thread already.

> > And I don't see why comments and doc strings should use the same
> > convention, they are used differently.
> 
> We often move text between comments and doc strings (mostly by making
> comments into doc strings), and it seems pretty awkward to insist on
> using different conventions in the two different parts of the same
> source file.

We also move text between doc strings and the manual, or vice versa,
but no one will (I hope) suggest to use `..' instead of the Texinfo
markup and have arguments in uper-case, or vice versa.  Moving text
sometimes requires to make small adjustments, and that's not a
catastrophe.