Sorry about the delay replying. [David]
But the whole point is that
The underscore can be thought of as a right-pointing arrow. The trailing underscores point away from hyperlink references, and the leading underscores point toward `hyperlink targets`_.
[Brett]
I don't view the underscores like that (might be my training in philosophy and symbolic logic). I see them more just as visual delineators for the reST parser and not as a metaphorical pointer.
Of course they're "visual delineators"; so is *all* syntax. In the end, everything is just pixels on a screen or ink on paper. The point is that in reStructuredText's terms, the underscores *act* as if they're right-pointing arrows, pointing away from references and toward targets. Example below. The existing forms of hyperlinks use underscores in this way, and I don't see any value in adding new syntax ("->") to do the same conceptual job. Also, the underscore syntax (which originated with Setext) was chosen because underscores are unobtrusive; "->" stands out more.
Just thought of a better name for this beast: "embedded targets".
Using "embedded" works for me, but not targets.
This is in terms of the reStructuredText vocabulary, in which a "hyperlink" is made up of two parts, a "reference" and a "target". The vocabulary is established, and it's not going to change without a good strong reason. Putting them together, we have a reference:: name_ and a target:: .. _name: URL The reference name is what ties the two together. In any case, I'm going to call it "embedded URI", which is very specific.
I vote for general feature or a directive. Either was I want the feature.
I'm going to make it a general feature. -- David Goodger <goodger@python.org> Open-source projects: - Python Docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/ (includes reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html) - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net/