False positive directive detection: Text with colons in parentheses incorrectly parsed

[DanielTowerz]

Bug Report

Description

The remark-directive plugin incorrectly identifies text containing colons within parentheses as directives, causing the text to be split into separate HTML elements.

Expected Behavior

Text like (Col. 3:17) should render as normal text without being parsed as a directive.

Actual Behavior

The text (Col. 3:17) gets split and rendered as:

(Col. 3</p><div></div>)

Reproduction

1. Use remark-directive in an Astro project with the following config:

remarkPlugins: [
  remarkDirective,
  // other plugins...
],

2. Add markdown content:

Porque al final, la Palabra de Dios nos enseña que todo lo que hagamos, ya sea en palabra o en obra, debemos hacerlo en el nombre del Señor Jesús (Col. 3:17).

3. The parenthetical reference (Col. 3:17) gets incorrectly parsed and split

Environment

• remark-directive version: Latest
• Framework: Astro v5.10.2
• Context: Processing markdown with biblical references

Additional Context

This issue particularly affects content with biblical references (e.g., (Matt. 5:16), (1 Cor. 2:14), (2 Co. 10:5), etc.) where the colon is part of chapter:verse notation, not a directive indicator.

The plugin seems to interpret the : character as part of directive syntax even when it's clearly within parentheses and part of regular text content.

Possible Solutions

• Add logic to exclude colon detection when inside parentheses
• Provide configuration option to customize directive detection patterns
• Allow escape sequences for text containing colons that should not be parsed as directives
• Improve the tokenizer to better distinguish between actual directives and regular text with colons

Impact

This affects any markdown content containing parenthetical references with colons, making the plugin unsuitable for religious, academic, or technical content that uses similar notation patterns.

Workaround

Currently, the workaround is to disable remarkDirective entirely, but this removes all directive functionality including needed features like admonitions and media embeds, or to escape some way colon.

[remcohaszing]

Use a backslash to escape the colon:

(Col. 3\:17)

[github-actions]

Hi! This was closed. Team: If this was fixed, please add phase/solved. Otherwise, please add one of the no/* labels.

[github-actions]

Hi! Thanks for reaching out! Because we treat issues as our backlog, we close issues that are questions since they don’t represent a task to be completed.

See our support docs for how and where to ask questions.

Thanks,
— bb

[wooorm]

importantly please also see the thread at #19, there is an option of improving it if you want to do some work!