Re: [PATCH] rev-parse: fix mismatch quoting of separator in the message

From: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Date: Sep 22, 2021, 20:08 UTC
Message-ID: <YUuNOcqClVjQamYh@nand.local>
In-Reply-To: <87bl4k7532.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>

On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 09:59:51PM +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

Show 25 quoted lines

>
> On Wed, Sep 22 2021, Taylor Blau wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 12:28:22PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> >> Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com> writes:
> >>
> >> > On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 06:17:45PM +0700, Bagas Sanjaya wrote:
> >> >> There is a quoting mismatch quoting `--` separator in "no usage string
> >> >> given...." message (`' instead of ``). Fix it.
> >> >
> >> > For what it's worth, I think that the `' style is typographic, since the
> >> > pair look like English "smart quotes" (as opposed to straight quotes). I
> >> > have no opinion about which is better, but I don't think the pre-image
> >> > was necessarily a mistake.
> >>
> >> I thought that we try to avoid "smart quotes" in our messages.
> >
> > I think UTF-8 smart quotes are generally frowned upon in source code,
> > but I didn't think we had any hard-and-fast rule about whether to prefer
> > 'this' to `that' (for what it's worth, I prefer the former and it seems
> > to be more common).
>
> No comment on what's preferred, other than I wish we'd pick a style and
> stick to it. Just a note that this used to be the way to do it in
> e.g. the GNU guidelines, I see it isn't anymore though: [1].

I agree. But for what it's worth, I think we should:

  - accept patches, such as this one, which move things in a positive
    direction

  - not spend a ton of time or reviewer bandwidth on conversions
    throughout the tree

In other words, I'm happy to see patches like this, or little clean-ups along the way in related areas, but I would be unhappy to see a massive patch to change all instances from one to the other.

> 1. https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Quote-Characters-1

Thanks, Taylor