pymdownx.critic not rendering as expected

[tacticz]

Hello, I'm new to mkdocs-material and currently exploring / practicing with the syntax.
I'm going through the documentation's reference pages and have reached the formatting section.

At this point I'm trying to activate the pymdownx.critic extension, inserting it in my mkdocs.yml configuration file.
Then, adding the example code given in the documentation, I expected it to render as expected. Unfortunately, the code is outputted unformatted.

In my mkdocs.yml file I have:

...
markdown_extensions:
  - attr_list
  - admonition
  - pymdownx.details
  - pymdownx.tabbed
  - pymdownx.highlight
  - pymdownx.superfences
  - pymdownx.keys
  - pymdownx.critic
  - pymdownx.emoji:
      emoji_index: !!python/name:materialx.emoji.twemoji
      emoji_generator: !!python/name:materialx.emoji.to_svg

I also tried adding the mode: view option in case it was required but to no avail...

...
markdown_extensions:
  ...
  - pymdownx.critic:
      mode: view

My index.md file contains the following markdown code (copy / pasted from the documentation page):

Text can be {​--deleted--} and replacement text {​++added++}. This can also be
combined into {​~~one~>a single~~} operation. {​==Highlighting==} is also
possible {​>>and comments can be added inline<<}.

{​==
Formatting can also be applied to blocks, by putting the opening and closing
tags on separate lines and adding new lines between the tags and the content.
==}

Which I expected to see rendered as illustrated in the documentation. But, as said earlier, it just outputs "as is", no formatting occurs, the code being outputted to the rendered page: {​--deleted--}, {​++added++}, {​==Highlighting==} and {​~~one~>a single~~} are present.

Does anyone have a hint on what I might be doing wrong here?
All other extensions that I activated earlier are working as expected until now...

Thank you.

PS:
As I go further through the documentation, it appears that I face a similar problem with pymdownx.betterem. As a matter of fact, it seems that whenever a secondary argument is required by the extension, it doesn't seem to work. Is it that I am writing it wrong in the mkdocs.yml file?

What I currently have in my mkdocs.yml file (based on what seems to be prescribed) is:

• a lline with markdown_extensions: at "level zero" (i.e. preceded by zero space)
• followed by one line for each extension, starting with two spaces, then a caret, one space then the extension name
• for extensions requiring a secondary argument: one line following the extension name, starting with four spaces, then the argument name followed by a colon, then the argument value

markdown_extensions:
  - attr_list
  - admonition
  - pymdownx.details
  - ...
  - pymdownx.betterem:
      smart_enable: all
  - ...

Is this the correct way to do it?
Does someone have an idea of where I might be wrong?

Thanks

[facelessuser]

There seem to be a lot of questions here, so right now I'll stick to the first. From what I see, the setup looks fine, but the snippet you posted had bad characters in it (invisible white space stuff):

Once removing those, it works fine:

[facelessuser]

I have it working locally:

_Example_:

``` markdown
Text can be {--deleted--} and replacement text {++added++}. This can also be
combined into {~~one~>a single~~} operation. {==Highlighting==} is also
possible {>>and comments can be added inline<<}.

{==

Formatting can also be applied to blocks, by putting the opening and closing
tags on separate lines and adding new lines between the tags and the content.

==}
```

_Result_:

``` md-render
---
extensions:
- pymdownx.critic
---
Text can be {--deleted--} and replacement text {++added++}. This can also be
combined into {~~one~>a single~~} operation. {==Highlighting==} is also
possible {>>and comments can be added inline<<}.

{==

Formatting can also be applied to blocks, by putting the opening and closing
tags on separate lines and adding new lines between the tags and the content.

==}
```

To serve locally, you have to do this

npm start
python -m mkdocs serve

python -m will serve local files so we can do this:

  - pymdownx.superfences:
      custom_fences:
        - name: mermaid
          class: mermaid-experimental
          format: !!python/name:pymdownx.superfences.fence_code_format
        - name: md-render
          class: md-render
          format: !!python/name:tools.pymdownx_md_render.md_sub_render

Not sure how that works with your docker image and publishing, but the alternative is that I could stuff it in the mkdocs-material-extra package, and you reference it from there as you already install it 🤷🏻.

[squidfunk]

python -m mkdocs serve

Wouldn't that also be covered by pip install -e ., which I already use for plugin development, so we could keep on using mkdocs serve? I think we had it like this for the icon integration before we decided to move the extensions outside of this repository.

[facelessuser]

Maybe? I don't think -e would install anything in the tools folder as we would want to exclude that in setup. Though we could drop it in the package itself maybe. We don't have to document it, but 🤷🏻. I'd have to play with -e and confirm.

[squidfunk]

I've disabled the Critic extension in 51d4920 and replaced the rendered example with plain and simple inline HTML. For now, this seems to be the simplest approach. I've also removed the zero-width whitespace characters from the code example, so it should now work straight away when copied.

[facelessuser]

That's what I used to do and is a fine solution.

[tacticz]

Nevertheless, I'm still facing a problem with the betterem extension. It is activated:

markdown_extensions:
  - ...
  - ...
  - pymdownx.betterem:
      smart_enable: all
  - ...

And I typed (no copy paste this time) one example from the betterem extension page:

***I'm italic and bold* I am just bold.**

***I'm bold and italic!** I am just italic.*

But it still renders "as is" (no bold, no italic) :-(
I tried without the smart_enable: all option, as well as with the smart_enable: asterisk value but nothing seemed to work.

[facelessuser]

I believe that is a bug with that specific case. There was some refactoring a bit ago, and apparently, I don't have a test case for ***content* more content** and ***content** more content** when smart is enabled. I don't often ever actually use this syntax, and apparently, others don't use it too often as you are the first to bring this up. It was broken for both underscore and star syntax. The documentation though was using a non smart configuration for star in the working example.

So, it's not that betterem is not working, it just isn't working for this case.

I believe I have a fix for this locally as this picture shows non-smart star and smart underscore working now (this logic will apply to smart == all as well.

[tacticz]

Thank you @facelessuser for this info.
I tested with other examples given on the betterem extension page and I could actually see that they are working 👍🏽

I am myself surprised that I picked the only non-working example 🤣

[facelessuser]

Just an update, this issue will be addressed in 8.3 when it is released.