| 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 |