#439 Field names in field lists have max length of 14 characters

[Álvaro Mondéjar Rubio]

Hi,

I'm debugging an strange behaviour of docutils 0.18.1 with Python 3.8.10.

Minimal reproducible example:

from docutils.core import publish_parts
from docutils.writers.html4css1 import Writer

content = """Some text

:012345678901234: foo
:a: b
:0123456789012345: bar
:01234567890123: baz
"""

print(publish_parts(content, writer=Writer())["fragment"])

Output:

<p>Some text</p>
<table class="docutils field-list" frame="void" rules="none">
<col class="field-name" />
<col class="field-body" />
<tbody valign="top">
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name" colspan="2">012345678901234:</th></tr>
<tr class="field"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="field-body">foo</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">a:</th><td class="field-body">b</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name" colspan="2">0123456789012345:</th></tr>
<tr class="field"><td>&nbsp;</td><td class="field-body">bar</td>
</tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">01234567890123:</th><td class="field-body">baz</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

It seems that doesn't accept field names larger than 14 characters, adding additionals rows in the table with HTML escaped   spaces. Checking the documentation about field lists I can't find anything related, nor in the RFC822.

Is this an expected behaviour? Thanks!

[Günter Milde]

There is no limit to the length of field names (check the output of the "pseudoxml" or "docutils XML" writers).
The observed behaviour is a rendering feature of the "html4css1" writer, described in the Docutils Configuration guide. You can configure the field-name limit or consider switching to the html5 writer that converts field lists to HTML description lists with the "field-list" class.

[Álvaro Mondéjar Rubio]

Great, thank you!