[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikitext-l] Determining the behaviour of apostrophes

[David Gerard]

Steve Bennett has been writing a parser grammar, and investigating how
the present parser *actually* works.

Turns out the apostrophe-italic combination only works once a para. Is
this expected?


- d.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com>
Date: 27 Nov 2007 15:05
Subject: Re: [Wikitext-l] Determining the behaviour of apostrophes
To: Wikitext-l <wikitext-l at lists.wikimedia.org>


On 11/28/07, Jared Williams <jared.williams1 at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> The code is still missing the searching for an single-letter preceeding a
> bold to split at. Seems none of the tests exercise that particular bit of
> code.

That's a relief. Now that I understand this rule, I think it's a
complete load of bollocks, and should be removed from any notion of
"correct" treatement of wikitext. Mismatched apostrophe groupings
should be considered erroneous input whose rendering is undefined.

Why?

For starters, as discussed, the French wikipedia doesn't even use this
construct. Worse, it only works *once* per paragraph. Look at how this
renders:

* L'''amour'' is great the first time. But l'''amour'' fails the second time.

You guessed it, bold from the first ''' to the second ''', and italics
from the first '' to the second ''. And why would it be any different?

The treatment of 4 apostrophes is much less offensive. This renders correctly:
* L''''amour''' is bold the first time. And l''''amour''' is still
bold the second time.

The 4 apostrophes -> apostrophe, bold rule is at least consistent,
though it's still not intuitive that this: ''''blah'''' put the first
apostrophe in normal text, while the second one is bold. Hard to
believe the user really wants that...

Of course, the only time 4 apostrophes ever renders as anything
*other* than apostrophe followed by bold is when the crazy rule above
is invoked, turning it into two apostrophes followed by italics.

Steve (rambly late at night)

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