Jared Williams wrote:
Problem is quotes are also valid as part of the textual content, so could not italics immediately before or after an apostrophe. As in
L'''arc de triomphe''
Which the current parser resolves to L'<i>arc de triomphe</i>
What I am going to say is going to be the worst heresy, but could this problem be solved by gradually migrating to a new wiki markup, for example **bold** and //italic//? This markup is more logical and easier to remember, more used outside of MediaWiki (unofficial email markup is similar) and more easily visible than apostrophe markup, and I never understood how the apostrophes came to be in the first place. The most important for this discussion - it also has much less potential to confuse the parser.