Tels wrote:
Yes, I agree on the "simple" solution. However, the current situation isn't "simple" for things like l'''italic'' because it is unclear what exactly that should mean. Maybe it means
l<i>'italic</i>
or it means
l'<i>italic</i>
How is the computer (and the human writing it) to know which is which? You need at least one more bit information to distinguish between these two variants.
The computer knows which to output because it's been programmed a certain way.
The human can reasonably expect to get the behaviour that would clearly be more useful. We keep talking about French, but actually a great deal of languages is affected in the same way. All you need is an apostrophised contraction before a word that can potentially be italicised or bolded.
Therefore, l'''italic'' should always output l'<i>italic</i>, and the "one more bit of information" you talked about should only be added in the unusual case. The only language I have come across where you will commonly want the apostrophe to be italicised or bolded is Klingon, though I could imagine that Hawaiian may also be affected, as a word can begin with an apostrophe in both of these languages.
Greetings, Timwi