Bug#828167: pandoc: in RST to HTML, no URI duplication in relative links when reference omitted

[Christian Heller]

Package: pandoc
Version: 1.16.0.2~dfsg-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

"What led up to the situation?"

Using pandoc to convert a ReStructured Text document to HTML.

"What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
ineffective)?"

I have a file test.rst that contains this string: `<foo>`_

I run pandoc test.rst > test.html

"What was the outcome of this action?"

I cat test.html and get this content:

<p><a href="foo"></a></p>

"What outcome did you expect instead?"

I expected test.html to contain something like this:

<p><a hef="foo">foo</a></p>

I expected this because

1) the RST specification states:

"The reference text may also be omitted, in which case the URI will be
duplicated for use as the reference text. This is useful for relative
URIs where the address or file name is also the desired reference text:

See `<a_named_relative_link>`_ or `<an_anonymous_relative_link>`__
for details."

(<http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#embedded-uris-and-aliases>)

2) docutils' rst2html (which I don't want to due to other faults of it) 
actually produces something like this, namely: 

<p><a class="reference external" href="foo">foo</a></p>

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.5
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'testing-updates'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=, LC_CTYPE= (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages pandoc depends on:
ii  libc6            2.19-18+deb8u4
ii  libffi6          3.1-2+b2
ii  libgmp10         2:6.0.0+dfsg-6
ii  liblua5.1-0      5.1.5-7.1
ii  libluajit-5.1-2  2.0.4+dfsg-1
ii  libpcre3         2:8.35-3.3+deb8u4
ii  libyaml-0-2      0.1.6-3
ii  pandoc-data      1.16.0.2~dfsg-1
ii  zlib1g           1:1.2.8.dfsg-2+b1

pandoc recommends no packages.

Versions of packages pandoc suggests:
pn  etoolbox                   <none>
pn  pandoc-citeproc            <none>
pn  texlive-latex-recommended  <none>
pn  texlive-luatex             <none>
pn  texlive-xetex              <none>
pn  wkhtmltopdf                <none>

-- no debconf information