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Add warning for invalid footnotes reference (and unused definitions) #930
Description
Activity
The resulting document just has a literal [^f2] in the text.
Note, a problem with this is it is basically an intended part of commonmark; that square brackets
[]are parsed as text, if there are no definitions: commonmark/commonmark-spec#702
footnote references are generally treated in the same way, although perhaps you could make the case that[^is a more explicit syntax, so that we could remove this "lazy evaluation"; it would be a breaking change for myst, but shouldn't affect too many.- changed the title
[-]No warning for invalid footnotes[/-][+]Add warning for invalid footnotes reference (and unused definitions)[/+]on May 12, 2024 Looking at djot, they do indeed always treat
[^...]as a footnote, even if no definition is given: https://djot.net/playground/?text=%5B%5Ea%5D&sourcepos=false(you'll note in https://github.com/jgm/djot, general shortcut link syntax
[...]is removed)Thinking about this now actually, perhaps a route to removing the annoying "lazy" behaviour of shortcut link references like
[...]for myst, would be to introduce a more "specific" syntax like[=...], e.g.footnote references are never parsed as text [^footnote] link shortcuts starting with `[=` are never parsed as text (and the `=` is removed from the link) [=reference] [^footnote]: This is a footnote [reference]: https://example.com
goes to:
<p>footnote references are never parsed as text <a id="fnref1" href="#fn1"><sup>1</sup></a></p> <p>link shortcuts starting with <code>[=</code> are never parsed as text (and the <code>=</code> is removed from the link) <a href="https://example.com">reference</a></p> <section role="doc-endnotes"> <hr> <ol> <li id="fn1"> <p>This is a footnote<a href="#fnref1">↩︎</a></p> </li> </ol> </section>
What version of
myst-parserare you using?3.0.1
What version dependencies are you using?
Sphinx 7.2.6
docutils 0.20.1
What operating system are you using?
Mac
Describe the Bug
If a Markdown footnote does not have a corresponding reference in either direction, no warnings are emitted. Compare the equivalent RST and Markdown:
The first one gives two warnings in the build
The second one gives no warnings. The resulting document just has a literal [^f2] in the text.
Expected Behavior
An invalid footnote should produce a warning, ideally in both directions, since it is an invalid cross-reference.
To Reproduce
No response