Re: [Docutils-users] Problem (?) with inline literals

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

[David Abrahams]
> When I try your workaround I still get a grammatically incorrect
> apostrophe in the word "lists".

The apostrophe was inserted to provide a word boundary, but has no
other meaning as markup.  In other words, it's not supposed to
disappear, so it doesn't.

> Would it break anything if you added the backslash to the list of
> "certain punctuation characters"?  That way, I could write
> ``list``\s and get exactly the effect I want.

[David Goodger]
> Interesting idea.  May work.  I'll have to think it through.  There
> may be adverse side-effects due to the way backslash-escapes are
> handled internally (they're converted to \x00 null bytes, which I've
> always thought was a bit of a kludge, but it's worked thus far).

I tried it, it does work, and I can't think of any nasty side-effects.
This neat trick allows for arbitrary text after inline markup:

    Those bracketed expressions are Python ``list``\s.

So I've checked it in.  Available now from CVS or in 20 minutes from
the snapshot.

I don't see a good way to allow for arbitrary text *before* inline
markup though.  Is there a need?  We can't use a simple backslash,
since that says "the following is *not* markup".  Perhaps a certain
escape sequence can be defined as "disappearing", like "\-" or "\." or
"\'".  ("\ " has already been proposed as a way to indicate
non-breaking space; not implemented yet.  After looking this up, it
seems the "disappearing" idea isn't new either:
<http://docutils.sf.net/spec/notes.html#character-processing>.)

-- 
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/