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