On 12/1/07, Monahon, Peter B. Peter.Monahon@uspto.gov wrote:
'''bold ''''4text = bold apostrophe normal four text, this makes no sense. In the four apostrophe grouping, the first three should have toggled bold, and the final should have been interpreted as text, displaying '4text normal, but when actually displayed, the ' was bold and the 4text was normal. Huh? THERE'S THE BUG!
4 apostrophes is always converted to 1 apostrophe then bold. (Then possibly reconverted again, which is probably a bug, but it's hard to define what a bug is in this context...)
THIS IS WHAT THE PARSER SEEMS TO ASK:
I think you will find it more enlightening just to read the source code (parser.php). It's well written and nicely commented. Failing that, I think I've captured the behaviour at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec/BNF/Inline_text .
If you'd like to keep discussing this, take it to wikitext-l.
Steve