Backslash missing in the User Guide

[CyrilleB79]

Steps to reproduce:

Look at User Guide, paragraph "12.2.2. Punctuation/symbol pronunciation"

Actual behavior:

There is the following sentence:

Normal backslashes in the Replacement field should thus be doubled, e.g. "a\b" should be typed in order to get the "a\b" replacement.

Expected behavior:

In the .md file, the sentence is:

Normal backslashes in the Replacement field should thus be doubled, e.g. "a\\b" should be typed in order to get the "a\b" replacement.

So in the converted HTML, the two expressions should be "a\\b" and "a\b", I.e. two backslashes in the first expression.

Technical

From what I have seen about markdown, backslashes are used to escape special markdown characters. When we have two backslashes in a row, the first backslash is just used to escape the second one, i.e. the second one will be literally a backslash. Though, Markdown seems not to complain when backslash is used before a non-special character.

There are two possibilities:

• Either we just fix this sentence, what would be easier for translators
• Or we double any backslash in the documentation, for more consistency, but more work for translators.

My personal preference (being also a translator) is the first solution.

NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments:

N/A

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source:

N/A

NVDA version:

2024.4beta

Windows version:

N/A

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

N/A

Other information about your system:

N/A

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

N/A

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

• NVDA 2024.1: the issue is also present
• NVDA 2023.3.4: the issue is NOT present

I suspect #15945 to have brought this regression.

If NVDA add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

N/A

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

N/A

[CyrilleB79]

@michaelDCurran I'd like to know your opinion on this topic give the recent discussion about escaped characters and poedit.

Should all backslashes be escaped (i.e. doubled) in.md files?

[michaelDCurran]

I think in future we should double all back slashes in the source english markdown files. Once pr #17214 is completed and merged to beta, I will then fix the one double back slash case you pointed out in the English user guide.

[christopherpross]

@michaelDCurran
Would it be okay if I took over the issue? I would like to try to contribute regularly to NVDA in the future and this would be a good first issue.

[nakul-py]

i am working on this and using first possibility for now by fixing the sentence