Compare and contrast:

1. <pre> a <nowiki> block </nowiki> </pre>

2. <pre> a <nowiki> block </pre>

3. a <nowiki> block </nowiki>

4. a <nowiki> block

Why is the <nowiki> rendered literally in 2, but stripped out in 1?

My working understanding of nowiki and pre was that both of them altered the parsing/lexing behaviour, treating everything other than its closing partner literally. So <pre> <nowiki> </pre> should render <nowiki> literally, and <nowiki> <pre> </nowiki> should render <pre> literally. But this doesn't seem to be quite the case.

Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to what the correct behaviour *should* be? Does anyone rely on one treatment over the other? The current behaviour seems inconsistent, especially comparing 2 with 4 above.

Steve