[Doc-SIG] Documentation markup & processing / PEPs

[Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)]

David Goodger wrote:
> Note that "is not guaranteed" is written, on purpose,
> specifically to cover cases of output formats that can't
> preserve whitespace.

...elucidation of how HTML works...

But what I wanted was the formatter to generate appropriate   tags
for me.

> I'll amend the spec along the lines of "although every
> attempt to preserve whitespace will be made, it is not
> guaranteed to be preserved," and specifically mention
> HTML's TT behavior.

Gosh, coming from (amongst other things) a TeX background, it always
makes go *cringe* when HTML is used as a description of formatting (yes,
I know, I know).

Anyway, what I (that is, me - I can't guarantee anyone else)
*specifically* want is two things:

1. Ability to have inline literals with the 'correct' number of spaces
(which is achievable to the "normal" standard in HTML with  , with
verbatim spaces in [La]TeX, and by other means in other presentation
media.

2. Ability to have a non-breaking space (which *seems* to work with
  in HTML - I haven't got a spec to hand, but "seems to work" does
appear to be the "normal" standard for HTML), and is ~ in [La]TeX, etc.

Of these, the second is the more important to me, and a folding of the
two into   for HTML and ~ for [La]TeX seems to be the easiest to do
(otherwise we need an escape mechanism for non-breaking spaces, which
I'd decrie). So if inline literals preserve spaces and can't span lines,
I would be happy (NB: it *should* be up to the presentation format what
it does with these, so the parser certainly shouldn't be dropping the
spaces, for inline literals at least).

Tibs

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