I think a better case of ambiguity is:
How about //a link, like http://example.org, in italic text? //
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I think it gets more complex when the protocol isn't recognised by the wiki parser. If a wiki that limits the procotols for raw links, to say just (http, ftp). What should a parser do with https://www.example.org ?
I think it should render it as seen ( http://www.example.org ) and not treat the as italics.
-- JaredWilliams, 2007-02-23
Url (plus e-mail address) is something like
(\b[a-z]{3,6}://\S+[^,.;:?!'"() ](\s|[,.;:?!'"()]|$)|[A-Za-z._-]+@[a-z.-]+[a-z])matched before the the italics are matched. The example given before:
... for example://apples//, oranges, **pears** ...
is an example of when markup adds perceived spacing that doesn't appear in the rendered page -- and as such is an obvious mistake on the side of the user. Of course, it would be nice to minimize the opportunities for such errors -- MoinMoin does have a list of accepted protocols and uses only these -- also for security reasons. Limiting the length of the protocol name is another trick -- unfortunately, from the kind of "smart" ones that work only sometimes and add to the confusion.
Personally I can live both without highlighting urls or with an apportunity for occasional wrong highlighting. I can also live with "__foo__" for italics, but we discussed this already. -- RadomirDopieralski, 2007-02-23