Re: [Docutils-users] Dash-transformation

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

[David Goodger]
 >> The "trim" attributes would have to match the context for the
 >> substitution to be applied.

[Felix Wiemann]
 > Why?  Given the definition above, I can insert an en-dash with
 > spaces around |--| like this |--| and I can insert an en-dash
 > without spaces-|--|-by surrounding it with hyphens (which is
 > sometimes needed, too).

I misunderstood.  I was thinking about my previous proposal for
dashes, like:

     .. |M| unicode:: U+02014 .. EM DASH
        :trim: -

And similarly for spaces:

     .. |emsp| unicode:: U+02003 .. EM SPACE
        :trim:

I had originally thought of this for spaces:

     .. |M| unicode:: U+02003 .. EM SPACE
        :trim:

So "word-|M|-word" would result in an em-dash, and "word |M| word"
would result in an em-space.  The substitutions would be
context-sensitive.  Perhaps not that great of an idea.

But now that I do understand what you meant, I don't like it so much.
Needing to write extra hyphens in order not to get spaces around an
em-dash is ugly and a kludge.  Even target cases, like "50-|--|-100",
are ugly.  I'm thinking that ":trim: -" might not be such a good idea
after all.

-- 
David Goodger <http://python.net/~goodger>