>> rst. I am using this todo item somewhat as a pretext to get the conversion
>> stuff in, which I need to implement some other stuff. As a result I was
>> less careful with the rst plugin than with the rest of the patch.
+>> I just updated the patch to fix some other problems which I found with
+>> more testing, and document the current limitations.
->> This being said, as I understand it rst cannot embed raw html in
->> the middle of a paragraph. I just found with more tests that even
->> links are a bit tricky, and won't work if they're not surrounded by
->> whitespace; the problem is that if we add this space, links
->> and preprocessor directives at the beginning of a line will be indented,
->> and this means something to rst. Also, rst complains about "?"
->> being used multiple times when the page contains more than one broken link,
->> apparently it uses it as a name for the reference as well as the link text.
+>> Rst cannot embed raw html in the middle of a paragraph, which is why
+>> "_link" was necessary. Rst links are themselves tricky and can't be made to
+>> work inside of words without knowledge about the context.
+>> Both problems could be fixed by inserting marks instead of the html/link,
+>> which would be replaced at a later stage (htmlize, format), somewhat
+>> similiar to the way the toc plugin works. When I get more time I will
+>> try to fix the remaining glitches this way.
->> The idea behind _link and other "intermediate
->> forms" was also that, when we can use rst's ability to target other output
->> formats, raw html won't be included in this process, and that
->> complications will happen with all markup languages if html continues
->> to be used as the language for preprocessor directive output.
->> Of course this could have been postponed until we actually need it,
->> but since we do... :-)
+>> Also, I think it would be useful if ikiwiki had an option to export
+>> the preprocessed source. This way you can use docutils to convert your
+>> rst documents to other formats. Raw html would be loosed in such a
+>> process (both with directives and marks), which is another
+>> argument for `"_link"` and other intermediate forms. I think I can
+>> come up with a way for rst's convert_link to be used only for export
+>> purposes, though.
->> I think I will document the limitations, and tune the bugs of the
->> rst plugin code to do the most sensible thing after some more reading
->> of the rst docs. Expect an updated patch in the next few days, and feel
->> free to ask for other adjustments in the meantime.
+>> --[[JeremieKoenig]]
->> Beyond being buggy in the least horrible way, I'm afraid I won't have
->> much time for ikiwiki in the next two or three weeks (exams),
->> but I think that ultimately these limitations could be worked around.
->> I'm not sure it is desirable for ikiwiki to know too much about the
->> syntax of its markup languages. Maybe the tricky "format" stuff
->> the toc plugin does could be used; maybe we need to think about more
->> generic ways to put "marks" in the various types of pages, which could
->> be expanded afer htmlization, and maybe the convert stuff could be used
->> to do this in an elegant way;
->> but then this is not very [[multiple_output_formats]] friendly either.
->> What do you think?
+> Another problem with this approach is when there is some html (say a
+> table), that contains a wikilink. If the link is left up to the markup
+> lamguage to handle, it will never convert it to a link, since the table
+> will be processed as a chunk of raw html.
+> --[[Joey]]
->> --[[JeremieKoenig]]
+### Updated patch
+
+I've created an updated [patch](http://www.idletheme.org/code/patches/ikiwiki-format-escapes-rlk-2007-09-24.diff) against the current revision. No real functionality changes, except for a small test script, one minor bugfix (put a "join" around a scalar-context "map" in convert_link), and some wrangling to get it merged properly; I thought it might be helpful for anyone else who wants to work on the code.
+
+(With that out of the way, I think I'm going to take a stab at Jeremie's plan to use marks which would be replaced post-htmlization. I've also got an eye towards [[todo/multiple_output_formats]].)
+
+--Ryan Koppenhaver
## Original patch
-[[tag patch]]
+[[!tag patch]]
<pre>
Index: debian/changelog
-* reStructuredText does not allow raw html to be inserted into
- documents, but ikiwiki does so in many cases, including
-- [[WikiLinks|WikiLink]] and many
-- [[PreprocessorDirectives|PreprocessorDirective]].
+- [[WikiLinks|ikiwiki/WikiLink]] and many
+- [[PreprocessorDirectives|ikiwiki/PreprocessorDirective]].
+* Some bits of ikiwiki may still assume that markdown is used or embed html
+ in ways that break reStructuredText. (Report bugs if you find any.)
* It's slow; it forks a copy of python for each page. While there is a