On 1/31/08, Jim Wilson wilson.jim.r@gmail.com wrote:
Would the change also include something to handle the case where a one-liner definition contains an intended literal colon? For example:
;Term: : Definition
In that case, the user really probably intendes a colon to trail "Term" in the resulting <dt>, but today that colon gets prepended instead as a literal to the Definition underneath.
I don't think you can unambiguously state the user's intention there. It could just as easily be:
;Ratio: 3:1
or something. If I'm not mistaken, this is the only place in the syntax where a single character other than pipe has meaning in the middle of plain text like this. Ambiguity is almost unavoidable.
Anyway, I have, as requested, found examples of trailing colons. These from Wikiversity:
Bloom Clock_2006 data.txt:;''[[w:Clematis virginiana|Clematis virginiana]]'' (De vil's darning-needle): Bloom Clock_2006 data.txt:;''[[w:Rudbeckia fulgida|Rudbeckia fulgida]]'' (Black- eyed Susan, Orange coneflower): Help_Wiki markup examples.txt:;[[w:newline|Newline]]: Help_Wiki markup examples.txt:;Dates: Help_Wiki markup examples.txt:;Example: Help_Wiki markup examples.txt:;typewriter font: Help_Wiki markup examples.txt:;Show special character codes: Wikiversity_Register Language of Interest.txt:;Links to existing Wikiversity Sit es:
(underscores in filenames often mean colons, so for example the fourth example is the text ";Dates:" in [[Help:Wiki markup examples]])
Searching en wikisource, 460 examples turn up:
; Article 7 (Education). : ; Article 9 (Freedom of association). : ; Article 10 (Privacy of letters, posts, and telecommunications amended 24 June 1968). :
... ;THE GRAND JURY CHARGES: ;Coro: ;Chorus: ;Estrofa I: ... ;GOLDBERG, SPECIAL TRIAL JUDGE: ;NORMA HOLLOWAY JOHNSON, District Judge: ;Epilogue: ;Editions: ; Speakers: ;What Happens if the Three Elements Are Not Received Together: ;Renewal Registration: ...
In Wikibooks there are 770 examples. ;Characteristics of the ''petiole'': ;Arrangement of the veins ('''venation'''): ;Add:To add two numbers, we take the modulo-2 of the result. Here is a truth table for an add operation: ;Multiply:Multiplication in modulo 2 happens normally, and no new operator needs to be defined. Here is the truth table for a multiplication operation: ;Target Audience: ;Scope: ;Prerequisites:
IMHO, all of these ought to be rendered with a literal final colon. There's no reason to think the author deliberately intended a meaningless character to render as ... nothing.
Steve