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 -- The Free Software Foundation claims no copyright on this file,   --
   6 -- compiled from the public emacs-devel mailing list.               --
   7 --                                                                  --
   8 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   9
  10   "Is it legal for a `struct interval' to have a total_length field of
  11 zero?"
  12   "We can't be arrested for it as far as I know, but it is definitely
  13 invalid for an interval to have zero length."
  14                                                 -- Miles Bader and RMS
  15
  16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  17
  18 Re: lost argument and doc string
  19
  20 I remember when I lost an argument.  Boy did that hurt!  ;-).
  21                                                       -- RMS
  22
  23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  24
  25   "'Cowardly' is not an adverb, although it looks like one.  It is an
  26 adjective.  It makes a statement about general temperament, rather
  27 than a specific occasion.  I don't think Emacs has a general
  28 temperament."
  29   "Mine does."
  30                                              -- RMS and Eli Zaretskii
  31
  32 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  33
  34   "In order to bring the user's attention to the minibuffer when an
  35 item such as 'Edit -> Search' is activated from the menu, I was just
  36 thinking that we could draw a big rectangle around the minibuffer,
  37 blinking (or zooming in-and-out) until some input is typed in."
  38   "How about dancing elephants?"
  39   "They don't fit in my office."
  40   "Well once the elephants are done, your office will be much...
  41 bigger."
  42                   -- Stefan Monnier, Miles Bader and Kai Grossjohann
  43
  44 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  45
  46 I remember these versions as yard-rocks (is that between inch-pebbles
  47 and mile-stones?).
  48                                                    -- Kai Grossjohann
  49
  50 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  51
  52   "I think it depends on video drivers.  I cannot reproduce it on my
  53 home PC, but I can at work."
  54   "Can you try to find a workaround at work?  (I guess you don't need
  55 a homearound at home.  ;-)"
  56                                               -- Jason Rumney and RMS
  57
  58 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  59
  60 By the way, I also really really hate this unibyte/multibyte problem.
  61 Sometimes I think I should have opposed to the introduction of such a
  62 concept more strongly.
  63
  64     imagine there's no unibyte
  65     it's easy if you try
  66     no bytes below us
  67     above us only chars
  68     imagine all the people living in multibyte
  69
  70                                                      -- Kenichi Handa
  71
  72 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  73
  74 I try to uphold the ideals that I was taught to value as an American,
  75 but every year I get less and less help from the United States.
  76                                                               -- RMS
  77
  78 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  79
  80   "If the terminfo entry is most likely wrong, and we know it, then it
  81 doesn't make sense to follow it."
  82   "Nevertheless, until now, we always did."
  83   "So.... should we not fix old bugs?"
  84   "Why fix an old bug if you can write three new ones in the same
  85 time?"
  86                        -- Miles Bader, Eli Zaretskii and David Kastrup
  87
  88 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  89
  90   [...] As is well known, people who speak American English tend to
  91 be more resource-conscious and try to avoid wasting precious bits
  92 transferring those redundant "u"s.
  93   Think of the number of occurrences of "color" and "behavior" in the
  94 Emacs tarball, multiply that by the number of times it'll be
  95 downloaded, stored on hard disks, archived, ...that's a substantial
  96 saving.
  97                                                     -- Stefan Monnier
  98
  99 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 100
 101 Re: Parent of a derived mode's keymap.
 102
 103   "I can't decide whether the title of this thread is more fitting for
 104 a blues song or a pulp fiction booklet.  It certainly projects drama."
 105   "Hey, it says derived, not deprived."
 106   "Actually, for some keymaps 'depraved' would fit better."
 107   "I knew it!  You're one of them vi lovers!  There is nothing wrong
 108 with Emacs using escape, meta, alt, control, and shift!"
 109                                      -- David Kastrup and Lute Kamstra
 110
 111 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 112
 113   "Aren't user-defined constants useful in other languages?"
 114   "The only user-defined constant is ignorance.  (With programmers,
 115 this is a variable concept ;-)"
 116                         -- Juanma Barranquero and Thien-Thi Nguyen
 117
 118 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 119
 120   "Uh, 'archaic' and 'alive' is not a contradiction."
 121   "Yes it is.  'Archaic' does not mean 'old' or 'early'.  It means
 122 'obsolete'."
 123   "'He arche' in Greek means 'the beginning'.  John 1 starts off with
 124 'En arche en ho Logos': in the beginning, there was the word.  Now of
 125 course we all know that Emacs was there before Word, but this might
 126 have escaped John's notice."
 127                                              -- David Kastrup and RMS
 128
 129 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 130
 131 Re: patch for woman (woman-topic-at-point)
 132
 133   "Sorry for the long message.  I wanted to make the problem clear
 134 also for people not familiar with `woman'."
 135   "Most hackers, I take?
 136    For a moment there I thought you had a patch that you could put on
 137 a woman, and it would make her come right to the topic at point
 138 without attempting any course of action that requires an advance
 139 course in divination.
 140    There'd be quite a sensational market for that, you know."
 141                                     -- Emilio Lopes and David Kastrup
 142
 143 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 144
 145   "[T]here may be a good reason since the code explicitly checks for
 146 this; see keyboard.c:789 [...]"
 147   "I think I understand, but I can't find the code in keyboard.c.  Do
 148 you really mean 'line 789'?  Of which revision?"
 149   "Sorry; by 789, I mean 3262 :-P"
 150                                    -- Chong Yidong and Stefan Monnier
 151
 152 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 153
 154   "[...] In my opinion, your change does not either increase or
 155 decrease readability.  It's a tossup."
 156   "Uh, setting tem to '', an artificial empty string, in order to have
 157 j incremented once again before breaking out of the finished loop is
 158 readable?
 159    Is this kind of 'readable' synonymous to 'comprehensible with
 160 serious effort', reminiscent of mathematicians' use of 'trivial' as
 161 synonymous with 'provable with serious effort'?"
 162                                               -- RMS and David Kastrup
 163
 164 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 165
 166 Re: New Emacs Icon and Tango
 167
 168   "What about using the 'happy face' with gnu horns?"
 169   "It would make Emacs the object of ridicule until the end of time."
 170   "Isn't it already?"
 171   "It's the object of ridicule until the end of _tape_.  The jury is
 172 still out about that end of time thing."
 173                  -- Kim F. Storm, Miles Bader, RMS and David Kastrup
 174
 175 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 176
 177   "Despite being a maths graduate, I can't think of any other such
 178 constants with anything like the universality of e and pi."
 179   "42"
 180                                 -- Alan Mackenzie and David Hansen
 181
 182 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 183
 184   "[...] So please do not delete anything."
 185   "Done."
 186                                               -- RMS and David Kastrup
 187
 188 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 189
 190   "I guess that can work in some circumstances, but it bypasses the
 191 printer drivers.  Couldn't that lead to problems for the printer
 192 drivers?"
 193   "Current research is that software does not suffer feelings of
 194 depression or loneliness when it is left out of the picture, so I
 195 wouldn't worry about it too much."
 196                                 -- Lennart Borgman and Jason Rumney
 197
 198 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 199
 200   "... a non-CS-educated guy like me ..."
 201
 202   "Kind of late, but thanks for letting us know.  I've just revoked your
 203   write access to the repository for the obvious safety reasons,"
 204                                 -- Bastien Guerry and Stefan Monnier