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#101 New "doctree" element for hard line breaks.
Not providing for "hard line break elements" in the Docutils document model and reStructuredText syntax was a deliberate decision at the time these two were devised.
However, times have changed and there are new arguments and use-cases for hard line breaks.
(cf. the comments in #85).
Something like a <br> inline node or special handling of <inline class=line-break> inline nodes may be considered. The latter would not change the document model and could be implemented at the writer level or via stylesheet rules.
Whether to add a reStructuredText syntax for hard line breaks can be decided independently.
The current rules require a non-white character in a role defined with .. role:: line-break.
Instead of relying on a "magic" class value, we may also allow the "xml:space" attribute for
<inline>elements and represent a hard line break in the Document Tree as space-preserving inline element containing a newline character.Markup parsers (like MyST and pycmark) could translate an end-of-line backslash to
Writers would need to check inline elements for xml:space and translate it accordingly (e.g. HTML may use
<span style="white-space:pre-wrap;">...<\span>in the general case and<br>if the content is just one newline character.)The advantage it that there is a precedence: the "xml:space" attribute is defined by the XML standard "to signal an intention that in that element, white space should be preserved by applications." https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-white-space
The Doctree uses the "xml:space" attribute already for the
<address>, <comment>, <doctest_block>, <literal_block>, <math_block>, and<raw>elements.https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/doctree.html#xml-space
-1 for backslash at line-end as "hard line break" in reStructuredText. This would not fit nice with
Rather, I suggest "backslash + newline" as a line continuation syntax for, e.g. wrapping long section titles.
+1 for a representation of hard line breaks in the Docutils Document Model ("doctree") for use in generated content or markup parsers.
Open question: should we introduce
* a new
<br>element,* a "magic" class value like "pre-wrap" (or "line-break"), or
* an "xml:space" attribute for
<inline>elements.