Verbatim picks and chooses what it will actually ignore. For an examples see Item192 revision 2 (posting an incomplete DOCTYPE declaration inside a verbatim block screws up rendering the rest of the page) and Item194, putting a Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = WeDontExist inside a verbatim takes effect, disallowing edits to all but the admin group.

There are two aims for verbatim, sometimes at odds with each other. In the words of JT ( TWiki:Codev/BrokenVerbatim ) "So far it's been about not altering content, rather than making sure browswer render it as typed"

Generally as I see it we want things like angle brackets ( > < )and ampersand entities (   )to be 'as typed' and variables and set statements to be 'not altered'.

Doing so with Set's and variables will break bug-compatibility with Cairo, however in this instance, this is one bug which should be squashed regardless as it shouldn't exist in Cairo either, IMO.

If in the end it is decided this can't/won't be done then there needs to be docs on what verbatim does and does not ignore.

related TWiki:Codev/VerbatimNotBlockSet .

---

Agreed that this should be fixed. Its impossible to remember what to escape and what not. -- AC

Undeferred, post Dakar CC

---

given its age, we may just close and ignore this as ancient painful history.

-- SvenDowideit - 26 Sep 2012 - 06:29