Wrapping up the first two courses

[John Rose]

On Apr 25, 2019, at 5:19 PM, Kevin Bourrillion <kevinb at google.com> wrote:
> 
> What is notable to me is that at no point did I ever change from one kind of string literal to another. There is no feature that I opted in or out of -- because there just doesn't need to be. That to me is a clear and compelling win for simplicity.
> 
> It's entirely possible this was all 100% clear already, in which case sorry!

It could be this way.  It's logical and simple to explain.

The simple rule for rectangle extraction requires that
you read through to the end of the MLS in order to see
where the rectangle is.  We've discussed alternatives
(like a left-hand gutter of single quotes) but none of
them appeal to us.

The """\- rule for opting out has the marginal advantage
that you can see up front that it's a special literal, where
you don't need to read all the way to the end to find out
that the rectangle has disappeared.  A second marginal
advantage is that it also allows the close-quote to be
indented along with its enclosing context, instead of
hard against the left margin.