The content at docs.python.org seems to be inserting language-dependent "smart quotes" in code blocks, which mangles backslashes and sequences like `'''`. Observed at https://docs.python.org/3/reference/lexical_analysis.html#string-and-bytes-literals , which renders

  longstring      ::=  “”’” longstringitem* “”’” | ‘”“”’ longstringitem* ‘”“”’

instead of

  longstring      ::=  "'''" longstringitem* "'''" | '"""' longstringitem* '"""'

and

  stringescapeseq ::=  “" <any source character>

instead of

  stringescapeseq ::=  "\" <any source character>

, and looks even worse in other languages:

  longstring      ::=   » »” » longstringitem*  » »” » | “ »«  »” longstringitem* “ »«  »”

  longstring      ::=  「」』」 longstringitem* 「」』」 | 『」「」』 longstringitem* 『」「」』


Running `make html` locally produces the desired output, so whatever's going on appears specific to the public site.

We spotted some quoting probleme in the french translation too, and I still didn't had time to look at it, typically here: https://docs.python.org/fr/3/library/itertools.html#itertool-functions

where we're getting:

  10.1.1. Fonctions d”itertool¶

instead of:

  10.1.1. Fonctions d'itertool¶

Tested locally with different versions of sphinx-build:

- 1.3.3 does not produce the issue
- 1.6.2 (used on docs.python.org) produces the issue
- 1.6.3 does not produce the issue
- 1.6.4 does not produce the issue

Reading the changelog between 1.6.2 and 1.6.3 lead to https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/3824 itself leading to
https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/commit/f99fe20e507210bd7db8665b8f234f1fe25c8100

So it looks fixed in 1.6.3 and 1.6.4, I'm running a full local build (using docsbuild-scripts) using sphinx 1.6.4 to see if we can upgrade.

Just as an update current docs site uses Sphinx 1.7.6 and the rendering is correct.

Thanks

Thanks for the follow up!