Re: Inconsistent text markup handling when double-nesting markers

[Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>]

Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> writes:

>> No, **bold** it is not a bug. The parser is recursive with inner markup
>> not "seeing" its parent. So, we first parse the outer bold and then
>> continue parsing the contents separately, as *bold*.
>
> I just find the following rather confusing:
>
> (org-export-string-as "**bold**" 'html t)
> "<p>\n<b><b>bold</b></b></p>\n"
> (org-export-string-as "**inner* outer*" 'html t)
> "<p>\n<b>*inner</b> outer*</p>\n"
> (org-export-string-as "*outer *inner**" 'html t)
> "<p>\n<b>outer <b>inner</b></b></p>\n"
> (org-export-string-as "*begin *inner* end*" 'html t)
> "<p>\n<b>begin *inner</b> end*</p>\n"

Maybe. It is indeed one of the edge cases. But it is following the
parser logic, which is (1) first matching markup is parser; (2) parsing
recursive contents is isolated.

>> Be it another way, /*bold italic*/ would also not be allowed as
>> we demand bol, whitespace, -, (, {, ', or " before the markup:
>> https://orgmode.org/worg/org-syntax.html#Emphasis_Markers
>
> Certainly /*b*/ should work, but nested bold was a surprise for me. I 
> believed that nesting is strictly prohibited. The case of underscores is 
> even more tricky due to ambiguity of underline and subscript.

It is not strictly prohibited on purpose. It is just a consequence of
how the parser works that nesting <end> constructs is almost impossible,
except certain edge cases like **b**.

> P.S. Juan Manuel at certain moment discovered that pandoc allows nesting 
> for *b1 *b2* b3*.

Which is a bug in pandoc.

I think we discussed this topic a number of times in the past - our
markup is a compromise between simplicity for users and simplicity of
the parser. This works in many simple cases, but edge cases become
problematic.

Workarounds have been discussed as well. For example, creole markup and
generic inline markup constructs (your idea with direct AST and the idea
with inline special blocks).

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
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