[Doc-SIG] Comments on "inline external targets" example texts

[Simon Budig]

Moore, Paul (Paul.Moore@atosorigin.com) wrote:
> A suggestion I made before, but badly, may be relevant here. If you can
> define a syntax specifically for "list of links" type of documents, could
> you not use a custom directive? For the Gimp example, suppose I write a
> link-list directive, which takes a series of entries, each of which contains
> a link, followed by '--', followed by free text, and formats it as a list of
> links, any way the directive writer prefers. Then the first sections look
> like::
> 
>     Some things for the Gimp
>     ========================
>     
>     Gimp__ is the best image manipulation program for
>     Unix-Computers. It is very easy to make extensions for it.
>     Here are my pages and extensions:
> 
>     __ http://www.gimp.org
>     
>     Plugins
>     -------
>     
>     .. link-list:
>        pagecurl.html -- A Plugin to create an pagecurl effect
>        fsdither.html -- A Plugin to do a proper Floyd-Steinberg dithering.
>        gimpbuttons.html -- A unuseable Plugin to provide a Buttonbar for
>                            the Gimp. Yes - I mean unuseable!
>        quant.html -- A Plugin to reduce the number of colors
> 

David is indeed right in his other Mail, I really do think that this
syntactic construct is not general enough, but I'll leave this discussion
to other people.

However, I want to point out that the proposed syntax has a problem with
the use of "--" as the separator. From my LaTeX-Background "--" is used
as the shortcut of a – and --- as shortcut for a — .

IIRC this is already mentioned as a suggestion in the reST-Docs. I think
it would be useful for the typographically interested user.

BTW: There are two ways people use this separating dash: In Germany
you use the ndash with spaces around it -- like this.

In English books I often see the mdash without spaces around it---like
this. I personally prefer the "german" way...  :)

This would interfere with your proposed syntax, expecially when you
*want* to have the URLs in the processed output -- separated by a ndash
from some descriptive text.

Bye,
        Simon

-- 
      Simon.Budig@unix-ag.org       http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/