Pandoc: Support <dfn> in HTML

[jgm]

See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/dfn

It would be good to parse

<dfn id="def-validator">validator</dfn>

as (pandoc markdown)

[validator]{#def-validator .definition}

and if we did that we could also render this construction to HTML using a <dfn> element.

[cideM]

I'd like to implement this. Am I right to assume that this is best done by adding a new Inlines in pandoc-types (Definition and a definitionWith builder) and then adding the readers/writers in pandoc proper? @jgm

<dfn> can have other elements as children which I'd just let pandoc handle. I'm just not sure if something like [[link](www.example.com)]{#def-validator .definition} would work, although I'd assume it would. Considering that many Inlines can have other Inlines as children.

[mb21]

I'd like to implement this.

Great!

Am I right to assume that this is best done by adding a new Inlines in pandoc-types

No, we would like to avoid changing pandoc-types, as this has the potential to break a lot of existing pandoc filters.

The idea is to parse

<dfn id="myid" title="mytitle">validator</dfn>

to (try with pandoc -f html -t native):

Span ("myid",["definition"],[("title", "mytitle")]) [Str "validator"]

Have a look at https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/pull/5843/ for a similar pull, and maybe https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#tests

[cideM]

So upon implementing this a couple more questions came up. If I turn this into a Span, I'd have to add special handling for that to the (Span (id',classes,kvs) ils) -> case of the HTML Reader. Because currently it would just output a <span> but we want a native <dfn> when using -t html. More specifically, that could would logically affect the case when we don't have an htmlSpanLikeElement

Nothing -> do
  h <- inlineListToHtml opts ils
  addAttrs opts (id',classes',kvs') (H.span h)

As far as I see it there are two options:

• Add special handling for that specific Span
• Add more functionality to htmlSpanLike so attributes are added to the resulting DOM node (currently <dfn id="foo">test</dfn> is turned into <dfn>test</dfn> when doing html -> html)

[jgm]

I think the second option sounds reasonable. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

[cideM]

Just in case someone's wondering I finally found some time to work on this and will have a PR up for discussion tomorrow