[Doc-SIG] Re: docutils REs

[Edward D. Loper]

01> _descriptive = """\
02> (?P<item>		# start our *item*
03>   (?:		# an unnamed group
04>      [^\n]*		  # 0..n of anything but newline
05>      '[^'\n]+'	  # a literal string, containing 1 or more chars
06>      [^\n]*		  # 0..n of anything but newline
07>   )*		# end group
08> 
09>   |			# or
10> 
11>   [^\n]*		# 0..n of anything but newline
12> 
13>   (?!		# negative lookahead for
14>     '		# a quote
15>     [^']*		# 0..n of anything but quote
16> 
17>     [ ]+ -- [ ]+	# spaces -- spaces
18> 
19>     [^']*		# 0..n of anything but quote
20>     '		# a quote
21>   )			# end of negative lookahead
22> )			# end of our *item*
23> 
24> [ ]+ -- [ ]+	# spaces -- spaces
25> 
26> (?P<text> .*)	# 0..n of any character
27> """

What are lines 11-21 for?  The only cases I can think of that 
they capture (that 3-7 don't) are dubious cases like::

  bad 'apostrophe nesting -- in the key

Also, I wanted to make sure you're clear that '^' and '$' match
beginning and end of LINE, not of STRING (although the latter is
a subset of the former).  You might want to use '\Z' and '\A'
to be more clear (although '\Z' still bothers me a little because
it matches both '' and '\n' (but not '\n\n').. seems like it
should just match '').

I don't think that STNG currently requires whitespace before
*emph* or **strong** etc... that's why I coded it like I did.
But I think that STpy's approach may be more reasonable..
(we should start making a list of proposed changes to STNG,
in order to make STpy and STNG more compatible.. Otherwise,
STminus will just end up being a big useless mess :) )..

Hm.. I guess s/we/I/ in that last parenthetical. :-/

I haven't decided yet on whether I'm happy about having this
concept of "acceptable ending punctuation.."  It sort of seems
like *all* punctuation should be ok, or *none*.. But I'll
think on it some more. (e.g., should it be ok to have a dash after
an *emph region*-like this?)

-Edward