[Doc-SIG] Suggestions for reST "modes"

[Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)]

Garth T Kidd responded:
> > > ``.. section::``, anyone?
> >
> > I suspect facetiousness (!) but it may come to that.
>
> I'm not being facetious_. "Section" is the generic term most Microsoft
> Word users would use to describe a chapter or appendix.

Ah - no, missed my target. The facetiousness I suspected was in your
using a directive to do the task, when (I thought) general agreement was
that directives were for *unusual* things, which this clearly would not
be (in a document production mode).

And "section" is also common in LaTeX, of course (my earlier background
being odd things at University, followed by Runoff, followed by TeX and
LaTeX).

> An application handling a "section" directive doesn't need
> to worry about having an insufficiently large list of words
> used in headings to describe a new section. Chapter and
> Appendix are obvious. `Fit the First` isn't.

There's a different argument here (which is related to my worries about
field lists as well), namely how one knows which things are legitimate
(well defined) and which are not. I've always assumed that somewhere
someone will have defined a dictionary of names and meanings for such
things. But I'll try to address this elsewhere, maybe today (tomorrow is
a Zoo trip, so isn't on).

> What if we want to discuss Proposition 23? ::
>
>     Proposition 23: Discussion
>     ==========================
>
> Oops. :)

Well, depends on how one implements it!

One either doesn't "know" Proposition as a keyword, or perhaps one has
to escape the ":" if one really wants a colon. But maybe that is a
*real* show-stopper, and directives *are* the way to do this.

Tibs

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Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)      http://www.tibsnjoan.co.uk/
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