Re: [Docutils-users] dfn role? (enhancement)

[Guenter M. <mi...@us...>]

On 2021-07-02, Alan G. Isaac wrote:
> Might docutils consider adding the `dfn` role? (It is already in Sphinx.)
> For an HTML writer, this would become a `dfn` element.

> Goal: add this semantic content to HTML output.

This goal is already easy to achieve since version:

  - Use HTML text-level tags <small>, <s>, <q>, <dfn>, <var>, <samp>, <kbd>,
    <i>, <b>, <u>, <mark>, and <bdi> if a matching class value
    is found in `inline` and `literal` elements.
    Use <ins> and <del> if a matching class value
    is found in `inline`, `literal`, or `container` elements.
    Use <small> for generated code line numbers.

  -- HISTORY.txt

For an example see the output of

  docutils/test/functional/input/data/html5-text-level-tags.txt
  
in test/functional/expected/standalone_rst2html5.html


I don't think it makes much sense to provide these output-format specific
roles as default roles. I did consider an rST include-file in
"docutils/parsers/rst/include/":

  Standard data files intended for inclusion in reStructuredText
  documents are distributed with the Docutils source code, located in
  the "docutils" package in the ``docutils/parsers/rst/include``
  directory.  To access these files, use the special syntax for standard
  "include" data files, angle brackets around the file name::
  
      .. include:: <isonum.txt>

  -- directives.txt


Günter