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

[David A. <da...@bo...>]

David Goodger <go...@py...> writes:

> [David Abrahams]
>> Rock me, Amadeus.
>
> Never thought I'd hear that again.  Now I kinda wish I hadn't.

Sorry ;-)

>>> 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".
>> 
>> But... inline markup doesn't happen within markup does it?
>
> Inline markup doesn't nest.  Is that what you mean?

Yeah.

>> the simple backslash outside of markup could mean "begin markup" if it
>> precedes "``".
>> 
>> 'course I'm probably missing something.
>
> The main reason for backslash-escapes to exist is to *prevent* markup
> recognition when it's not wanted::
>
>     Various forms of \*ML abound.
>
> The backslash "escapes" the normal meaning of whatever follows it.  In this
> case::
>
>     Use brackets for Python ``list``\s
>
> we've extended the meaning of the backslash to escape the normal "text"
> meaning of the "s" to make it into a word-boundary.  To do the same thing
> before the inline markup, I can only think of introducing a "disappearing
> escape sequence", like this:
>
>     *re*\'``Structured``\'*Text*
>     (italic "re" + monospaced "Structured" + italic "Text")
>
> That's awfully ugly though.

It could be worse.

I can think of one way to beautify cases like this: introduce a kind
of quotation which removes all spaces in what it surrounds as a
postprocessing step.

     ''*re* ``Structured`` *Text''

This would be analogous to re.VERBOSE, if memory serves.

-- 
                       David Abrahams
   da...@bo... * http://www.boost-consulting.com
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