[Doc-SIG] reST block quotes

[Beni Cherniavsky]

On 2002-12-15, David Goodger wrote:

> I wouldn't want to accept a proposal that was incompatible
> with an Email Reader (even a future potential Email Reader).
>[snip]
> > after the "-- ".

Then note that "-- " is the standard singnature separtor.  Since then it's
alone on the line, this is not an issue, just a point to document.

Also note that I use " -- " for a long dash -- probably a LaTeX-induced
habit; I saw some other people writing so.  Stupid word wrapping can well
put "-- " at the beginning of a line in running text.  Again not an issue,
just document that "-- " must come after an empty line (?).

About email reading, also note that ">>> " becomes ambiguos between
doctest blocks and some email clients that compact nested "> " quoting by
omiting the spaces.  And while we are there, how about "initials> "
quoting?  Also the "On Someday, Random Writer wrote:" is probably an
attribution too.  Now how do you handle a quote that's broken in the
middle and resumed?  Add to that nesting...

>[snip]
> You can do that with current reST; you would end up with nested block
> quotes.I don't get it.  Can you show me an example of how you'd like
> to apply this concept to reStructuredText sources?
>
I think the proposal is similar to the complaints of C coders coming to
Python -- they want indentation to have no meaning so they can make it
reflect the program's structure but *in the way they like it*.  I'm not
saying that the request should be rejected based on this analogy and
Python's rejection of such requests (maybe it would be nicer in reST).
If you ask my personal opinion, I'm quite happy with reST's current style
(perhaps modulo allowing indented bulleted lists instead of empty lines
but I'm not settled on it).

-- 
Beni Cherniavsky <cben@tx.technion.ac.il>