Whitespace and emphasis

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2005-11-28 à 21:11, A. Pagaltzis a écrit :


> Remember, though, noone is looking to change the rules asterisks.

> So I think changing the underscore rules would provide the right

> mix of features; better than either current Markdown or Textile

> for both Asian and Western scripts.

>

> Right?


Right, mostly. I remember myself saying we could disallow middle word  
emphasis when the two asterisks are in different words. Like this:

     This is a sam*ple empha*sis between two words.

Could disabling this cause a problem with Japanese text? Taken from  
Apple Japan's Hot News section on their website (strong emphasis  
added for testing purpose):
     クアッドコアプロセシングを行う**Power Mac G5  
Quad**を含む

As you can see, this wouldn't work because there is no space between  
the inserted english text and the surrounding Japanase characters,  
while there are spaces in the english text that makes the thing  
similar to the previous english-only example.

All I suggest is that we be careful about what we do if we change  
something.

I still think disallowing middle-word emphasis with underscore is the  
good thing to do for western languages. The remaining questions are:  
how much Markdown-formatted asian text has already been written using  
underscore emphasis? and how much should we care?


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/