Just a quick comment on "shortcuts" along with a favorite soapbox rant.

As has already been well-discussed, and well-considered: whatever character sequence you use for interpolating "shortcuts" will preclude their use as ordinary text, therefore it is best to choose a "rare" character sequence.

The problem is, in the discussion-space of 'computer programming languages' (especially versatile ones like perl) there *are* no rare character sequences. With all the different mini-syntaxes, protocols, idioms and neologisms out there, it's (arguably) impossible to choose a syntax that can never be misinterpreted as a command when it was really intended as plain text. Especially when you limit the command-delimiters to the fewest number of total characters. This is the classic linguistic problem of 'use versus mention'.

Ironically, perl (and unfortunately, perl seems to be alone on this) solves this universal problem *exceptionally* well. Namely, allow the user to specify her *own* command delimiters, and completely obviate the need to add cumbersome 'escape sequences' in nearly all circumstances. 

q§This is a $brilliant$ idea.§;
"This is a $brilliant idea.";
qq^This is a "$brilliant" idea.^;
q{This is a $brilli@nt ide@};
qŠThi§ i§ a $brilliant idĽaŠ;

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This unique aspect of perl should be on the "best practices" short list of how to solve this particular problem. A+

In reply to Re: Web forum markup language and the Monastery by dimar
in thread Web forum markup language and the Monastery by szabgab

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