From: Edward Cree <ecree.xilinx@gmail.com>
To: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>,
David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
Cc: Linux Doc Mailing List <linux-doc@vger.kernel.org>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
alsa-devel@alsa-project.org, coresight@lists.linaro.org,
dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org, intel-gfx@lists.freedesktop.org,
intel-wired-lan@lists.osuosl.org, keyrings@vger.kernel.org,
kvm@vger.kernel.org, linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org,
linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, linux-edac@vger.kernel.org,
linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org,
linux-f2fs-devel@lists.sourceforge.net,
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linux-iio@vger.kernel.org, linux-input@vger.kernel.org,
linux-integrity@vger.kernel.org, linux-media@vger.kernel.org,
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linux-rdma@vger.kernel.org, linux-riscv@lists.infradead.org,
linux-sgx@vger.kernel.org, linux-usb@vger.kernel.org,
mjpeg-users@lists.sourceforge.net, netdev@vger.kernel.org,
rcu@vger.kernel.org, x86@kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/53] Get rid of UTF-8 chars that can be mapped as ASCII
Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 14:16:16 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <df6b4567-030c-a480-c5a6-fe579830e8c0@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210510135518.305cc03d@coco.lan>
On 10/05/2021 12:55, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> The main point on this series is to replace just the occurrences
> where ASCII represents the symbol equally well
> - U+2014 ('—'): EM DASH
Em dash is not the same thing as hyphen-minus, and the latter does not
serve 'equally well'. People use em dashes because — even in
monospace fonts — they make text easier to read and comprehend, when
used correctly.
I accept that some of the other distinctions — like en dashes — are
needlessly pedantic (though I don't doubt there is someone out there
who will gladly defend them with the same fervour with which I argue
for the em dash) and I wouldn't take the trouble to use them myself;
but I think there is a reasonable assumption that when someone goes
to the effort of using a Unicode punctuation mark that is semantic
(rather than merely typographical), they probably had a reason for
doing so.
> - U+2018 ('‘'): LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
> - U+2019 ('’'): RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
> - U+201c ('“'): LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
> - U+201d ('”'): RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
(These are purely typographic, I have no problem with dumping them.)
> - U+00d7 ('×'): MULTIPLICATION SIGN
Presumably this is appearing in mathematical formulae, in which case
changing it to 'x' loses semantic information.
> Using the above symbols will just trick tools like grep for no good
> reason.
NBSP, sure. That one's probably an artefact of some document format
conversion somewhere along the line, anyway.
But what kinds of things with × or — in are going to be grept for?
If there are em dashes lying around that semantically _should_ be
hyphen-minus (one of your patches I've seen, for instance, fixes an
*en* dash moonlighting as the option character in an `ethtool`
command line), then sure, convert them.
But any time someone is using a Unicode character to *express
semantics*, even if you happen to think the semantic distinction
involved is a pedantic or unimportant one, I think you need an
explicit grep case to justify ASCIIfying it.
-ed
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-05-10 13:41 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-05-10 10:26 [PATCH 00/53] Get rid of UTF-8 chars that can be mapped as ASCII Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2021-05-10 10:27 ` [PATCH 52/53] docs: virt: kvm: avoid using UTF-8 chars Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2021-05-10 10:52 ` [PATCH 00/53] Get rid of UTF-8 chars that can be mapped as ASCII Thorsten Leemhuis
2021-05-10 11:19 ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2021-05-10 12:27 ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2021-05-10 10:54 ` David Woodhouse
2021-05-10 11:55 ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2021-05-10 13:16 ` Edward Cree [this message]
2021-05-10 13:38 ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2021-05-10 13:58 ` Edward Cree
2021-05-10 13:59 ` Matthew Wilcox
2021-05-10 14:33 ` Edward Cree
2021-05-11 9:00 ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2021-05-11 9:19 ` David Woodhouse
2021-05-10 13:49 ` David Woodhouse
2021-05-10 19:22 ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-05-11 9:37 ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2021-05-11 9:25 ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2021-05-10 14:00 ` Ben Boeckel
2021-05-10 21:57 ` Adam Borowski
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