RE: [Docutils-develop] Custom node types (was Re: pdf writer)

[Tony J I. (Tibs) <to...@ls...>]

David Goodger wrote:
> I'd just be wary of converting to standard Docutils
> nodes too early, because then you're locking in one style.
> This comes back to a discussion we had some time ago, about
> "stylist" components...

and went on to explain how this could be used in a Pysource context to
allow the "initial" docutils nodes tree to be more closely related to
the Python data, so that it could be transformed into differing
*specific* docutils node trees. Sort of an "aha!" moment for me, in
fact.

(and, of course, my summary is a lot less cogent than what he said)

Thanks, David - that makes a lot of sense to me. I think that what you
describe is indeed the correct way to go - something like (excuse the
imprecision)::

  Python source  --> ||reader||    --> internal representation

  internal rep   --> ||transform|| --> abstract docutils tree

  abstract tree  --> ||stylists||  --> specific docutils tree

where the "abstract" tree contains Python specific nodes.

I'll look more at all of this when I get back from holiday - some
interesting restructuring of pysource needs to be done (and some
learning of what docutils is now capable of), but you're clearly right
that it will lead to a better tool.

> Enjoy the sun!

Thanks

Tibs
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