207 lines
8.8 KiB
Plaintext
207 lines
8.8 KiB
Plaintext
---------------- -*- mode: text; coding: utf-8; fill-column: 70 -*- --
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-- --
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-- Humor (sometimes unintended) on the Emacs developer's list --
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-- --
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-- The Free Software Foundation claims no copyright on this file, --
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-- compiled from the public emacs-devel mailing list. --
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-- --
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"Is it legal for a 'struct interval' to have a total_length field of
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zero?"
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"We can't be arrested for it as far as I know, but it is definitely
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invalid for an interval to have zero length."
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-- Miles Bader and RMS
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Re: lost argument and doc string
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I remember when I lost an argument. Boy did that hurt! ;-).
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-- RMS
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"'Cowardly' is not an adverb, although it looks like one. It is an
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adjective. It makes a statement about general temperament, rather
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than a specific occasion. I don't think Emacs has a general
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temperament."
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"Mine does."
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-- RMS and Eli Zaretskii
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"In order to bring the user's attention to the minibuffer when an
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item such as 'Edit -> Search' is activated from the menu, I was just
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thinking that we could draw a big rectangle around the minibuffer,
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blinking (or zooming in-and-out) until some input is typed in."
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"How about dancing elephants?"
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"They don't fit in my office."
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"Well once the elephants are done, your office will be much...
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bigger."
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-- Stefan Monnier, Miles Bader and Kai Grossjohann
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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I remember these versions as yard-rocks (is that between inch-pebbles
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and mile-stones?).
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-- Kai Grossjohann
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"I think it depends on video drivers. I cannot reproduce it on my
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home PC, but I can at work."
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"Can you try to find a workaround at work? (I guess you don't need
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a homearound at home. ;-)"
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-- Jason Rumney and RMS
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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By the way, I also really really hate this unibyte/multibyte problem.
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Sometimes I think I should have opposed to the introduction of such a
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concept more strongly.
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imagine there's no unibyte
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it's easy if you try
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no bytes below us
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above us only chars
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imagine all the people living in multibyte
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-- Kenichi Handa
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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I try to uphold the ideals that I was taught to value as an American,
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but every year I get less and less help from the United States.
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-- RMS
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"If the terminfo entry is most likely wrong, and we know it, then it
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doesn't make sense to follow it."
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"Nevertheless, until now, we always did."
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"So.... should we not fix old bugs?"
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"Why fix an old bug if you can write three new ones in the same
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time?"
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-- Miles Bader, Eli Zaretskii and David Kastrup
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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[...] As is well known, people who speak American English tend to
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be more resource-conscious and try to avoid wasting precious bits
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transferring those redundant "u"s.
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Think of the number of occurrences of "color" and "behavior" in the
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Emacs tarball, multiply that by the number of times it'll be
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downloaded, stored on hard disks, archived, ...that's a substantial
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saving.
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-- Stefan Monnier
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Re: Parent of a derived mode's keymap.
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"I can't decide whether the title of this thread is more fitting for
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a blues song or a pulp fiction booklet. It certainly projects drama."
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"Hey, it says derived, not deprived."
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"Actually, for some keymaps 'depraved' would fit better."
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"I knew it! You're one of them vi lovers! There is nothing wrong
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with Emacs using escape, meta, alt, control, and shift!"
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-- David Kastrup and Lute Kamstra
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"Aren't user-defined constants useful in other languages?"
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"The only user-defined constant is ignorance. (With programmers,
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this is a variable concept ;-)"
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-- Juanma Barranquero and Thien-Thi Nguyen
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"Uh, 'archaic' and 'alive' is not a contradiction."
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"Yes it is. 'Archaic' does not mean 'old' or 'early'. It means
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'obsolete'."
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"'He arche' in Greek means 'the beginning'. John 1 starts off with
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'En arche en ho Logos': in the beginning, there was the word. Now of
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course we all know that Emacs was there before Word, but this might
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have escaped John's notice."
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-- David Kastrup and RMS
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"[T]here may be a good reason since the code explicitly checks for
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this; see keyboard.c:789 [...]"
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"I think I understand, but I can't find the code in keyboard.c. Do
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you really mean 'line 789'? Of which revision?"
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"Sorry; by 789, I mean 3262 :-P"
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-- Chong Yidong and Stefan Monnier
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"[...] In my opinion, your change does not either increase or
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decrease readability. It's a tossup."
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"Uh, setting tem to '', an artificial empty string, in order to have
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j incremented once again before breaking out of the finished loop is
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readable?
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Is this kind of 'readable' synonymous to 'comprehensible with
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serious effort', reminiscent of mathematicians' use of 'trivial' as
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synonymous with 'provable with serious effort'?"
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-- RMS and David Kastrup
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Re: New Emacs Icon and Tango
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"What about using the 'happy face' with gnu horns?"
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"It would make Emacs the object of ridicule until the end of time."
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"Isn't it already?"
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"It's the object of ridicule until the end of _tape_. The jury is
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still out about that end of time thing."
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-- Kim F. Storm, Miles Bader, RMS and David Kastrup
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"Despite being a maths graduate, I can't think of any other such
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constants with anything like the universality of e and pi."
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"42"
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-- Alan Mackenzie and David Hansen
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"[...] So please do not delete anything."
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"Done."
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-- RMS and David Kastrup
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"I guess that can work in some circumstances, but it bypasses the
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printer drivers. Couldn't that lead to problems for the printer
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drivers?"
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"Current research is that software does not suffer feelings of
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depression or loneliness when it is left out of the picture, so I
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wouldn't worry about it too much."
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-- Lennart Borgman and Jason Rumney
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"... a non-CS-educated guy like me ..."
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"Kind of late, but thanks for letting us know. I've just revoked your
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write access to the repository for the obvious safety reasons,"
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-- Bastien Guerry and Stefan Monnier
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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"I should have known better than to think I could be right and you
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wrong about some Emacs code I've just started looking at. Sorry about
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that."
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"No problem. It's one of the many joys of working on a code base
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that's up to almost 40 years old: First you have to figure out what
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the (no doubt smart) programmer meant to achieve with the code, and
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then try to figure out whether it ever even did that, and then whether
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it's still working the same way, and then whether it's still relevant
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due to changes elsewhere, and then finally whether it can be improved
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without breaking odd edge cases on obscure systems you don't have
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access to. 🙃"
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-- Ignacio Casso and Lars Ingebrigtsen
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