Re: Escape characters silently truncate other text

[John MacFarlane <fiddlosopher-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

> On Aug 30, 2022, at 2:59 PM, 'amindfv-cl+VPiYnx/1AfugRpC6u6w@public.gmane.org' via pandoc-discuss <pandoc-discuss-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm confused about this for a couple reasons:
> 
>  1. The silent truncation: I'd understand if I'd written `here's a string "with a\nequator"` and gotten back `here's a string "with a≠uator"`, but it's much more disturbing to have a single backslash to cause any following text to disappear
> 

Try it with —verbose

>  2. raw_tex seems not to actually let me use raw Tex... e.g.
> 
>    $ cat /tmp/foo.md 
>    here's a string "with a\nnewline\ncharacter"
> 
>    what happened to the other stuff?
> 
>    \emph{this also disappears}

Again, use pandoc -t native and you’ll see how pandoc is parsing this. It doesn’t disappear. It is parsed as raw LaTeX.  But raw LaTeX content is only passed through to formats that allow it (namely LaTeX, ConTeXt, Beamer, markdown + raw_tex, etc.).


>    This is fine, though: $E=mc^2$

Math is separate from raw tex; it is parsed as a Math element and we convert this as appropriate to the output format.

>    \this_isnt_latex
> 
>    This is: \neq
> 
>    $ pandoc /tmp/foo.md -o /tmp/foo.html
>    $ cat /tmp/foo.html 
>    <p>here’s a string “with a”</p>
>    <p>what happened to the other stuff?</p>
>    <p></p>
>    <p>This is fine, though: <span class="math inline"><em>E</em> = <em>m</em><em>c</em><sup>2</sup></span></p>
>    <p>_isnt_latex</p>
>    <p>This is: </p>
> 
> To me it'd be much more "principle of least astonishment" to only have raw_tex handle commands it understands (and then output them), not consume a lot of text and output nothing


The point of raw TeX is really to allow users to put in the sorrt of thing pandoc *wouldn’t* understand, because they know they want this in the output format.


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