[Doc-SIG] reserved characters

[Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)]

Edward D. Loper wrote:
> The idea would be that specific ST's would be allowed to use
> reserved characters if they want, or remove them from the reserved
> character list if they want.  So in STminus, we would have::
>
>    ReservedChars = # | @
>
> And in STpy, we would have::
>
>    ReservedChars = #

Hmm - I think I'd be happier calling them "special" characters, because
they *aren't* "globally" reserved - they can always be used freely in
contexts where they aren't keying their special action - for instance::

	First we have a #Python literal#, but # this looks like some sort of
comment

- that third '#' is NOT treated specially.

> This production would take care of making sure that those characters
> don't appear in normal text.

But see above - they (sort of) can.

> > I think that for STminus's purposes, it might make sense to make
> > characters reserved, *perhaps*, but for the "full fledged" ST's it
> > doesn't

Ah, well, that *does* make more sense - but I'd still prefer to call
them "special" so you can, erm, unreserve them slightly in future
versions if you wish. And also so they are clearly related in use to
other special characters, like '*'.

> > '[' and ']' are "force a reference" characters in Zwiki, and will be
> > used for similar purpose in STpy. But again, it depends on context.
>
> Hm.  I'm not sure I like the sound of that.  Care to elaborate?

It's much the same as the way PEPs work, with '[fred]' keying a
reference to an item "labelled" 'fred' (in some way), but being a Wiki
page, references off-page are meant to be *very* easy to generate, and
the way one does that is by the CapitalLettersInWords convention.
However, sometimes that needs circumventing (for instance, 'Tibs' won't
trigger such an event, so I would need to type '[Tibs]'). It's OK,
honest, it works well.

Tibs

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