Re: [Docutils-users] "Forgiving" mode

[David G. <go...@py...>]

[Beni Cherniavsky]
> [New to the list, rST rocks :]

Welcome, and thanks!

[David Ascher]
>> Is there an option I don't know about to let docutils barrel
>> through and never raise an exception when processing a
>> document?

[Beni Cherniavsky]
> I don't think that skipping errors is the right approach since it
> can guess wrongly what you meant.  DWIMs are known to make people
> sorry for using them :-).

I agree, which is why the defaults are set up as they are.  I do not
recommend changing them permanently.  Suppressing errors and warnings
is treating the symptom, not the cause.  In this case, the cause was a
bug; suppressing the errors would just mask the bug.  Posting bug
reports on SourceForge or this list gives much better results.

> However the cycle of running docutils and fixing the source is not
> very convenient when you are in a hurry.  TeX's approach of stopping
> and suggesting interactive fix possibilities could be more effecient
> (if the messages are less criptic ;-) but doesn't save the
> corrections in any way.  So how about a ``--halt=edit`` mode that
> will spawn your text editor on the line where the first error
> happened and after you exit the editor, it will restart from the
> beginning (or maybe continue if the input file's timestamp hasn't
> changed)?

I think the complexity of such a feature would outweigh its
usefulness.  Docutils' error output ("filename:lineno: message") is
already designed to be compatible with the output of many GNU tools,
which have support in Emacs and probably in other tools as well.

-- 
David Goodger  <go...@py...>  Open-source projects:
  - Python Docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
    (includes reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html)
  - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net/