[Doc-SIG] Email Reader (was Re: reST block quotes)

[David Goodger]

Beni Cherniavsky wrote:
> The more I think about an email reader the harder it looks.

:)

> I do think that some indentation demands could be relaxed, in
> particular literal blocks should be allowed in column 0 (i.e. even
> with negative indent!).

How would you know when they end?

> The second goal opens a can of worms -- free text is too free to
> parse automatically and needs corrections.

I suspect that an actual application for an Email Reader must present
itself before we can make these decisions.  IOW, what's the use case?
I don't know that there's much value in supporting email in general,
but I do know there would be much pain.

> BTW, maybe a generic syntax diagram parser [generator] would be
> useful to rapidly experiment with rST syntax variations.

Sounds cool, and non-trivial :)

> Getting automatic "indent/reduce conflict" reporting would be very
> cool :-).

Again, not following you.  Not enough words!

-- 
David Goodger  <goodger@python.org>  Open-source projects:
  - Python Docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
    (includes reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html)
  - The Go Tools Project: http://gotools.sourceforge.net/