Re: [Docutils-users] Dash-transformation

[Beni C. <cb...@us...>]

David Goodger wrote:
> [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.  

Yikes!@~  That's just way too subtle and only convenient for a few very 
marginal characters.

> The substitutions would be context-sensitive.  Perhaps not that great
> of an idea.
> 

-|M|-1

> 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.
> 
What if you do want a space?  Something *is* needed but ":trim: -" 
doesn't feel like the right thing.  Because what if you do want a hyphen?

-0

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