Documentatio markup

[malcolm-hs@cs.york.ac.uk]

> > Jan propses to use conventions like 'xxx' for variable names
> > and "zzz" for emphasis (I think). 
> > other lightweight emphasis conventions like _yyy_ or *zzz*
> 
> one that springs to mind for me is @Name@, but I don't really mind as
> long as it's non-ambiguous and doesn't cause parsing headaches.

Would there be any difficulty in permitting _all_ of the common ASCII
emphasis styles?  For instance, "name" and _name_ could be italic,
*name* could be bold, 'name' and @name@ could be hyperlinked bold,
or some such.  In fact, it wouldn't really matter which style was
rendered in what manner - different tools could do it differently if
they chose.  (Ok, except maybe hyperlinking would have to be defined.)

I do see one potential difficulty with the single-quoted 'name' style -
the common use of identifiers with a single or double prime on the end.
But in practice I think a tool can easily recognise that name' is
just a name, and not a name followed by unbounded emphasis.

Regards,
    Malcolm