code.delx.au - gnu-emacs/blob - etc/DEVEL.HUMOR

   1 ---------------- -*- mode: text; coding: utf-8; fill-column: 70 -*- --
   2 --                                                                  --
   3 -- Humor (sometimes unintended) on the Emacs developer's list       --
   4 --                                                                  --
   5 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   6
   7   "Is it legal for a `struct interval' to have a total_length field of
   8 zero?"
   9   "We can't be arrested for it as far as I know, but it is definitely
  10 invalid for an interval to have zero length."
  11                                                 -- Miles Bader and RMS
  12
  13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  14
  15 Re: lost argument and doc string
  16
  17 I remember when I lost an argument.  Boy did that hurt!  ;-).
  18                                                       -- RMS
  19
  20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  21
  22   "'Cowardly' is not an adverb, although it looks like one.  It is an
  23 adjective.  It makes a statement about general temperament, rather
  24 than a specific occasion.  I don't think Emacs has a general
  25 temperament."
  26   "Mine does."
  27                                              -- RMS and Eli Zaretskii
  28
  29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  30
  31   "In order to bring the user's attention to the minibuffer when an
  32 item such as 'Edit -> Search' is activated from the menu, I was just
  33 thinking that we could draw a big rectangle around the minibuffer,
  34 blinking (or zooming in-and-out) until some input is typed in."
  35   "How about dancing elephants?"
  36   "They don't fit in my office."
  37   "Well once the elephants are done, your office will be much...
  38 bigger."
  39                   -- Stefan Monnier, Miles Bader and Kai Grossjohann
  40
  41 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  42
  43 I remember these versions as yard-rocks (is that between inch-pebbles
  44 and mile-stones?).
  45                                                    -- Kai Grossjohann
  46
  47 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  48
  49   "I think it depends on video drivers.  I cannot reproduce it on my
  50 home PC, but I can at work."
  51   "Can you try to find a workaround at work?  (I guess you don't need
  52 a homearound at home.  ;-)"
  53                                               -- Jason Rumney and RMS
  54
  55 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  56
  57 By the way, I also really really hate this unibyte/multibyte problem.
  58 Sometimes I think I should have opposed to the introduction of such a
  59 concept more strongly.
  60
  61     imagine there's no unibyte
  62     it's easy if you try
  63     no bytes below us
  64     above us only chars
  65     imagine all the people living in multibyte
  66
  67                                                      -- Kenichi Handa
  68
  69 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  70
  71 I try to uphold the ideals that I was taught to value as an American,
  72 but every year I get less and less help from the United States.
  73                                                               -- RMS
  74
  75 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  76
  77   "If the terminfo entry is most likely wrong, and we know it, then it
  78 doesn't make sense to follow it."
  79   "Nevertheless, until now, we always did."
  80   "So.... should we not fix old bugs?"
  81   "Why fix an old bug if you can write three new ones in the same
  82 time?"
  83                        -- Miles Bader, Eli Zaretskii and David Kastrup
  84
  85 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  86
  87   [...] As is well known, people who speak American English tend to
  88 be more resource-conscious and try to avoid wasting precious bits
  89 transferring those redundant "u"s.
  90   Think of the number of occurrences of "color" and "behavior" in the
  91 Emacs tarball, multiply that by the number of times it'll be
  92 downloaded, stored on hard disks, archived, ...that's a substantial
  93 saving.
  94                                                     -- Stefan Monnier
  95
  96 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  97
  98 Re: Parent of a derived mode's keymap.
  99
 100   "I can't decide whether the title of this thread is more fitting for
 101 a blues song or a pulp fiction booklet.  It certainly projects drama."
 102   "Hey, it says derived, not deprived."
 103   "Actually, for some keymaps 'depraved' would fit better."
 104   "I knew it!  You're one of them vi lovers!  There is nothing wrong
 105 with Emacs using escape, meta, alt, control, and shift!"
 106                                      -- David Kastrup and Lute Kamstra
 107
 108 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 109
 110   "Aren't user-defined constants useful in other languages?"
 111   "The only user-defined constant is ignorance.  (With programmers,
 112 this is a variable concept ;-)"
 113                         -- Juanma Barranquero and Thien-Thi Nguyen
 114
 115 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 116
 117   "Uh, 'archaic' and 'alive' is not a contradiction."
 118   "Yes it is.  'Archaic' does not mean 'old' or 'early'.  It means
 119 'obsolete'."
 120   "'He arche' in Greek means 'the beginning'.  John 1 starts off with
 121 'En arche en ho Logos': in the beginning, there was the word.  Now of
 122 course we all know that Emacs was there before Word, but this might
 123 have escaped John's notice."
 124                                              -- David Kastrup and RMS
 125
 126 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 127
 128 Re: patch for woman (woman-topic-at-point)
 129
 130   "Sorry for the long message.  I wanted to make the problem clear
 131 also for people not familiar with `woman'."
 132   "Most hackers, I take?
 133    For a moment there I thought you had a patch that you could put on
 134 a woman, and it would make her come right to the topic at point
 135 without attempting any course of action that requires an advance
 136 course in divination.
 137    There'd be quite a sensational market for that, you know."
 138                                     -- Emilio Lopes and David Kastrup
 139
 140 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 141
 142   "[T]here may be a good reason since the code explicitly checks for
 143 this; see keyboard.c:789 [...]"
 144   "I think I understand, but I can't find the code in keyboard.c.  Do
 145 you really mean 'line 789'?  Of which revision?"
 146   "Sorry; by 789, I mean 3262 :-P"
 147                                    -- Chong Yidong and Stefan Monnier
 148
 149 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 150
 151   "[...] In my opinion, your change does not either increase or
 152 decrease readability.  It's a tossup."
 153   "Uh, setting tem to '', an artificial empty string, in order to have
 154 j incremented once again before breaking out of the finished loop is
 155 readable?
 156    Is this kind of 'readable' synonymous to 'comprehensible with
 157 serious effort', reminiscent of mathematicians' use of 'trivial' as
 158 synonymous with 'provable with serious effort'?"
 159                                               -- RMS and David Kastrup