This is related to #3206.

It says:

Basically, this is how it works now:

1. Get the post source
2. Replace the shortcodes with placeholders
3. Process with docutils or whatever compiler
4. Replace the placeholders with the HTML generated by the shortcodes

Perhaps the process should be:

• 1 → 3 → 2 → 4.
• Or if itsn't, 1 → 2 → 3 (recursively for others includes in the includes?) → 2 (again) → 4.

Is this correct?

The replacement-with-placeholders step must happen before compilation, because a compiler might mess up the contents of your shortcodes (eg. replace foo_bar_baz with foo<em>bar</em>baz).

What could be done in this specific case is this: when processing include reST directives, the included source code should undergo the placeholder replacement, and the generated placeholders/shortcodes should be added to the main post’s replacement list (as if they were in the main post).

This would require:

• copying the Include directive from docutils into Nikola's source code, and adding some code to replace shortcodes and place the new replacements list in some state area accessible
• extracting the new replacements list from the state in the reST compiler and adding it into the shortcodes dict

If anyone wants to have a go at implementing this, we'll be happy to accept a pull request.

(Closed by mistake.)

I would like this behavior.