Re: [PATCH 00/53] Get rid of UTF-8 chars that can be mapped as ASCII

Matthew Wilcox
2021-05-10T14:01:04Z

On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 02:16:16PM +0100, Edward Cree wrote:
> On 10/05/2021 12:55, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> > The main point on this series is to replace just the occurrences
> > where ASCII represents the symbol equally well
>
> > - U+2014 ('—'): EM DASH
> Em dash is not the same thing as hyphen-minus, and the latter does not
> serve 'equally well'. People use em dashes because — even in
> monospace fonts — they make text easier to read and comprehend, when
> used correctly.
> I accept that some of the other distinctions — like en dashes — are
> needlessly pedantic (though I don't doubt there is someone out there
> who will gladly defend them with the same fervour with which I argue
> for the em dash) and I wouldn't take the trouble to use them myself;
> but I think there is a reasonable assumption that when someone goes
> to the effort of using a Unicode punctuation mark that is semantic
> (rather than merely typographical), they probably had a reason for
> doing so.

I think you're overestimating the amount of care and typographical
knowledge that your average kernel developer has. Most of these
UTF-8 characters come from latex conversions and really aren't
necessary (and are being used incorrectly).

You seem quite knowedgeable about the various differences. Perhaps
you'd be willing to write a document for Documentation/doc-guide/
that provides guidance for when to use which kinds of horizontal
line? https://www.punctuationmatters.com/hyphen-dash-n-dash-and-m-dash/
talks about it in the context of publications, but I think we need
something more suited to our needs for kernel documentation.