Links in italic wrongly converted from Dokuwiki to reStructuredText

[dbitouze]

Explain the problem.

This is about links in italic when converting from Dokuwiki. As shown below, when converting:

• to (e.g.) Org-mode, no problem;

  $ echo -e "The following //text and [[https://pandoc.org/|link]] are in italic in Dokuwiki//. Isn't it?" | pandoc -f dokuwiki -t org
  The following /text and [[https://pandoc.org/][link]] are in italic in Dokuwiki/. Isn't it?
  

• to reStructuredText, the syntax is wrong since the italic marks are not separated from the previous and following words:

  $ echo -e "The following //text and [[https://pandoc.org/|link]] are in italic in Dokuwiki//. Isn't it?" | pandoc -f dokuwiki -t rst 
  The following *text and*\ `link <https://pandoc.org/>`__\ *are in italic in Dokuwiki*. Isn't it?
  

  and the \ after and before them, if inserted in order to add spaces, haven't any effect. Indeed, here is how the previous is converted with docutils' rst2html:

  <p>The following <em>text and</em><a class="reference external" href="https://pandoc.org/">link</a><em>are in italic in    Dokuwiki.</em> Isn't it?</p>
  

Pandoc version?

• pandoc: v2.18
• OS: Linux Mageia 8

[dbitouze]

More precisely:

1. The current conversion provided by pandoc:
The following *text and*\ `link <https://pandoc.org/>`__\ *are in italic in Dokuwiki*. Isn't it?
   is wrong since it would result in the html code (with rst2html and probably Sphinx-doc):
   <p>The following <em>text and</em><a class="reference external" href="https://pandoc.org/">link</a><em>are in italic in Dokuwiki</em>. Isn't it?</p>
   (missing spaces).
2. A better conversion would be:
   The following *text and* `link <https://pandoc.org/>`__ *are in italic in Dokuwiki*. Isn't it?"
   (backslashes removed) since it would result in the html code (with rst2html and probably Sphinx-doc):
   <p>The following <em>text and</em> <a class="reference external" href="https://pandoc.org/">link</a> <em>are in italic in Dokuwiki</em>. Isn't it?</p>
   But that wouldn't be perfect since the link isn't in italic.
3. Unfortunately, the expected conversion:
   The following *text and `link <https://pandoc.org/>`__ are in italic in Dokuwiki*. Isn't it?"
   would be wrong since it would result in the html code (with rst2html and probably Sphinx-doc):
   <p>The following <em>text and `link &lt;https://pandoc.org/&gt;`__ are in italic in Dokuwiki</em>. Isn't it?</p>
   instead of:
   <p>The following <em>text and <a class="reference external" href="https://pandoc.org/">link</a> are in italic in Dokuwiki</em>. Isn't it?</p>
   and, unfortunately, it seems there is nothing to do, at least currently.

Hence, probably the second conversion would be the least bad one.