First off: I prefer to use the text mode and I would protest if it wasn't there. It's a shame that Atlassian hasn't implemented Markdown natively as part of Jira and that there seems to be no official plugin supporting it. Markdown is one of the reasons I love Bitbucket.org.

Anyway, given that we as users are stuck with the Confluence Wiki Markup (as it was at least called in the past), I am running into problems time and time again. This ticket is about that.

I am using all kinds of programming and markup languages and with Jira I am struggling to format something as simple as (in words) "backslash, 'usepackage', opening brace, closing brace" inline. Most of the problems occur when attempting to format something inline, even when something like {noformat} (<- the rendered HTML suggests that the braces are not even part of the <tt> element created by the double-braces) will work.

Case in point:

\usepackage{}

Now let's try to make this properly render inline with Confluence Wiki Syntax:

First attempt

Trying to escape the "special" characters:

{{\\usepackage\{\}}}

... even though the current documentation doesn't even mention the backslash any longer.

Outcome:
usepackage

NB: that line break after "Outcome:" above isn't from me.

Second attempt

Adding a leading backslash:

{{\\\usepackage\{\}}}

Outcome: \\\usepackage

Third attempt

... let's at least get those braces to show up somehow:

{{\\\usepackage{{}}}}

Outcome: \\\usepackage{}

... argh. Now the closing brace is no longer part of the monospaced text.

Fourth attempt

... maybe by escaping the closing braces somehow?

{{\\\usepackage{{\}}}

Outcome: \\\usepackage{

... argh.

Summary

... can we agree that this appears to be an arbitrary/unpredictable outcome? I really hope someone at Atlassian can see how frustrating this user experience is. Since the problem still exists with the Jira version used for this tracker, I assume I needn't give a Jira version. But if it matters: v8.1.0#801000-sha1:2e1cd1b.

I've been fighting these issues (on and off) since Jira 5.x. And it's not just LaTeX code which cannot be properly formatted inline (which is really a must-have inside bullet lists), it also affects several constructs in C and C++, though I don't remember the issues from the top of my head (and cannot look them up as I don't have access to that Jira instance any longer).

Any chance that the technical audience (as opposed to the mouse-pusher faction) can see that fixed? How about supporting MarkDown as a first-class-citizen in the Jira world, for example?

btw: this is an in-house instance of Jira. Hope this was the correct project I picked. If not, please move the ticket around.