[New-bugs-announce] [issue22029] argparse - CSS white-space: like control for individual text blocks

[paul j3]

New submission from paul j3:

A number of the issues seek to customize the wrapping behavior in HelpFormatter - beyond what the current Formatter subclasses offer.

http://bugs.python.org/issue13923 and http://bugs.python.org/issue12806 - want a wrapping method that preserves existing \n, while still wrapping long lines.

http://bugs.python.org/issue12806#msg144353 - suggests that this formatter is similar to CSS property white-space: pre-wrap.

http://bugs.python.org/issue9399 - wants to write a pre-formatted 'license' text using a 'version'-like Action.
 -
http://bugs.python.org/issue13023  - wants to use 2 HelpFormatter subclasses at the same time (Raw and Defaults).

http://bugs.python.org/issue13023#msg144475: "Yeah, adding a formatter instance seems overkill for the usual case of wanting to preserve formatting of the epilog."

http://bugs.python.org/issue12284 - wants to put formatted examples in the epilog.

It might be easier to handle these issues if the user could designate how an individual text block (description, epilog, help) is to be formatted.  

HTML has a '<pre>' tag, CSS has 'white-space:' attribute (with 5 styles of wrapping and white-space handling).

The usage example might be something like:

    parser = ArgumentParser(prog='PROG',
        description = NoWrap('This is a description...'),
        epilog = PreWrap('Multipoint epilog with examples...'),
        )
    parser.add_argument('-f', help='help with normal wrapping')

----------
components: Library (Lib)
messages: 223625
nosy: BreamoreBoy, GraylinKim, bethard, denilsonsa, eric.araujo, jonash, paul.j3
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: argparse - CSS white-space: like control for individual text blocks
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.5

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue22029>
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