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CLIENT-SPECIFICATION: fix typo, add a way to escape the placeholder syntax #10730

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8 changes: 7 additions & 1 deletion CLIENT-SPECIFICATION.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -116,7 +116,13 @@ The structure inside these translation folders is identical to that of the main

## Page structure

Although this specification is about the interface that clients must provide, it is also worth noting that pages are written in standard [CommonMark](https://commonmark.org/), which the exception of the non-standard `{{` and `}}` syntax, which surrounds values in an example that users may edit. Clients MUST NOT break if the page format is changed within the _CommonMark_ specification.
Although this specification is about the interface that clients must provide, it is also worth noting that pages are written in standard [CommonMark](https://commonmark.org/), with the exception of the non-standard `{{` and `}}` placeholder syntax, which surrounds values in an example that users may edit. Clients MAY highlight the placeholders and MUST remove the surrounding curly braces. Clients MUST NOT treat them as the placeholder syntax if they are escaped using `\` (i.e. `\{\{` and `\}\}`) and MUST instead display literal braces, without backslashes. Placeholder escaping applies only when both braces are escaped (e.g. in `\{` or `\{{`, backslashes MUST be displayed). Clients MUST NOT break if the page format is changed within the _CommonMark_ specification.

### Examples

- `ping {{example.com}}` MUST be rendered as "ping example.com"
- `docker inspect --format '\{\{range.NetworkSettings.Networks\}\}\{\{.IPAddress\}\}\{\{end\}\}' {{container}}` MUST be rendered as "docker inspect --format '{{range.NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' container"

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I would personally lighten the syntax to only one backslash:
docker inspect --format '\{{range.NetworkSettings.Networks\}}\{{.IPAddress\}}\{{end\}}' {{container}}.

This is maybe easier to parse than what I had proposed, but still not too heavy for reading source pages (even though this isn't done often). The drawback could if we needed to render something like \{{ <...> }}

But since I've seen only 3 occurrences of this problem, maybe this change is not needed. 🤷🏻

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@SethFalco SethFalco Sep 18, 2023

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I favor a backslash for each curly brace. I think it's much more intuitive to treat things per character, rather than by our special definition attributed to combinations of characters.

In Markdown, \{ already means a literal {. So we should run with it. This will also be more backward compatible. When we don't mean the placeholder syntax, {{ is never found, so even if the client doesn't know to ignore it, it'll inadvertently ignore it anyway.

This will be simpler than giving {{ conditional meaning based on an escape sequence multiple characters away.

If a client finds \{{range.NetworkSettings.Networks\}}, and processes placeholders before delegating to the CommonMark library, it's probably going to mess up unless it knows to check for a backslash. If a client finds \{\{range.NetworkSettings.Networks\}\} without any special handling, it knows it's not a placeholder, and the CommonMark library will just do its magic.

For nested curly braces inside the placeholder syntax:

Syntax Arg (curly braces removed) Rendered
{{uwu}} uwu uwu
{{\{uwu\}}} \{uwu\} {uwu}
{{\{\{uwu\}\}}} \{\{uwu\}\} {{uwu}}

The main difference, here, is that having a single escape sequence affect multiple characters would require special handling from clients, while doing one escape sequence per character is already supported/expected by clients and CommonMark parsers. The benefits assume the client is using a CommonMark library to parse the page.

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- `mount \\{{computer_name}}\{{share_name}} Z:` MUST be rendered as "mount \\computer_name\share_name Z:"


## Page resolution
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