Suggestion: Add zero-width nbsp to emphasis-regexp-components

Suggestion: Add zero-width nbsp to emphasis-regexp-components

[Chris]

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Hello!

I'm not an experienced mailing list user, but I will try to be brief.
Please excuse my lack of common courtesy.


* Problem

  There needs to be a way to coax Org into interpreting something as an
  emphasis marker, even if it ordinarily would not look like it (for
  example, because it is in the middle of a regular word, when putting
  emphasis on only part of a word.)

  - Version of Org: 9.1.6
  - Version of Emacs: GNU Emacs 25.3.2 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)


* Suggested Solution

  Include the Unicode zero width no-break space character (U+feff) in
  both ~pre~ and ~post~ sections of ~org-emphasis-regexp-components~.

  I currently have trouble accessing code.orgmode.org (502 Bad Gateway),
  but I imagine the solution to look something like

      --- org.el      2018-06-06 09:33:56.602335268 +0200
      +++ org-zwnbsp-emphasis.el      2018-06-06 09:39:37.985958647 +0200
      @@ -4355,7 +4355,7 @@
       ;; set this option proved cumbersome.  See this message/thread:
       ;; http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/68681
       (defvar org-emphasis-regexp-components
      -  '("- \t('\"{" "- \t.,:!?;'\")}\\[" " \t\r\n" "." 1)
      +  '("- \ufeff\t('\"{" "- \ufeff\t.,:!?;'\")}\\[" " \t\r\n" "." 1)
         "Components used to build the regular expression for emphasis.
       This is a list with five entries.  Terminology:  In an emphasis string
       like \" *strong word* \", we call the initial space PREMATCH, the final

  This has the added tiny benefit that legacy documents that still use
  U+feff as a byte order mark may be able to get emphasis also on their
  first word... (Not sure if this is a problem, actually, just throwing
  it out there.)


* Discussion

  - Does this even make sense to begin with, or is it just me?

  - Is the zero-width no-break space the most sensible character to do
    this with?

    I see the zero-width joiner as the alternative – but that appears to
    have more legitimate uses inside words, especially in some
    non-Western scripts such as Arabic and Indic. I use U+feff mostly
    because it is actually sort of a space but not quite.


* Related Reports

  I found an email in the archives which touches on the same point[1],
  but suggests a more radical change.

  [1]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2017-09/msg00363.html

Regards,
Chris

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Re: Suggestion: Add zero-width nbsp to emphasis-regexp-components

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-06-06, at 09:54, Chris <a@xkqr.org> wrote:

> * Problem
>
>   There needs to be a way to coax Org into interpreting something as an
>   emphasis marker, even if it ordinarily would not look like it (for
>   example, because it is in the middle of a regular word, when putting
>   emphasis on only part of a word.)
>
> * Suggested Solution
>
>   Include the Unicode zero width no-break space character (U+feff) in
>   both ~pre~ and ~post~ sections of ~org-emphasis-regexp-components~.

+1

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: Suggestion: Add zero-width nbsp to emphasis-regexp-components

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> On 2018-06-06, at 09:54, Chris <a@xkqr.org> wrote:
>
>> * Problem
>>
>>   There needs to be a way to coax Org into interpreting something as an
>>   emphasis marker, even if it ordinarily would not look like it (for
>>   example, because it is in the middle of a regular word, when putting
>>   emphasis on only part of a word.)
>>
>> * Suggested Solution
>>
>>   Include the Unicode zero width no-break space character (U+feff) in
>>   both ~pre~ and ~post~ sections of ~org-emphasis-regexp-components~.
>
> +1

This is already the case. 

PRE and POST parts of `org-emphasis-regexp-components' contain
"[:space:]", which matches zero width space.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou

Re: Suggestion: Add zero-width nbsp to emphasis-regexp-components

[Chris]

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Hey,

Nicolas Goaziou (mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr) 2018-06-06:
> Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:
> This is already the case. 
>
> PRE and POST parts of `org-emphasis-regexp-components' contain
> "[:space:]", which matches zero width space.

Odd. I guess my version 9.1.6 is too old to get this change? In that
case, I'm looking forward to upgrade!

Regards,
Chris

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Re: Suggestion: Add zero-width nbsp to emphasis-regexp-components

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2018-06-06, at 14:07, Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote:

> This is already the case. 
>
> PRE and POST parts of `org-emphasis-regexp-components' contain
> "[:space:]", which matches zero width space.

Wow, thanks!  That means I really need to upgrade my Org.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl