Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> I think we should probably confine ourselves to output formats that are
> in very wide use or we'll be supporting a vast multitude. CSV and XML
> both qualify here - not sure that ReST does.
Yeah, that's the core of my objection.
Also, having now looked at the proposed patch, it seems clear that it
isn't addressing the issue of quoting/escaping at all; so I wonder how
this can be considered to be a safely machine-readable format.
In particular, the output seems to me to not even approximate the rules
laid down at
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html
which among other things requires backslashing of literal asterisk,
backquote, vertical bar, and underscore in order to avoid textual data
looking like it matches the format's inline-markup constructs.
So, quite aside from the question of whether we care to support ReST,
my opinion is that this patch fails to do so, and a significantly more
invasive patch would be needed to do it.
regards, tom lane