[Doc-SIG] quoting

[Tony J Ibbs (Tibs)]

Edward D. Loper wrote:
> It just seems like there should be *some* mechanism for backquoting,
> since there are some things that you can *not* express without it..
> Would people still object if we made some mechanism available, but
> *strongly* discouraged people from using it when they could avoid
> it (since it makes the plaintext hard to read)?

I also feel we *probably* want some means of quoting.

*But* before introducing one, I want an exhaustive example of other
cases than the need to quote a single quote within literal texts (and
this would include, if people want it, a *really* careful argument for
why one needs to be able to quote '#' in '#..#', although I feel this is
probably needed too).

*After* we have an exhaustive list of all the places we *need* text
escaping, *then* we can try to define an STpy-like manner of doing it.

Note that this is known to be swampy ground, else STNG would have
something in place already.

The difficulty of coming up with something "natural to read" (and I'm
still not convinced that '\' fits the tag!) makes this an item I want to
defer, probably until after release 1.0 of STpy and STminus.

(Yes, I know it *feels* like something one must have, and not having it
makes STpy and STminus difficult to self-document, but the ST-lesson is
that, in general, difficult cases don't actually come up in real life.)

Tibs

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