Format text in a link in reStructuredText

This construct:

Here you have |optparse.OptionParser|_.

.. |optparse.OptionParser| replace:: ``optparse.OptionParser`` documentation
.. _optparse.OptionParser: http://docs.python.org/library/optparse.html

produces this HTML (some linebreaks added):

<p>Here you have 
  <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/library/optparse.html">
  <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">optparse.OptionParser</span></tt> documentation</a>.
</p>

I realize that this is not exactly what you asked for, but maybe it’s close enough. See also http://docutils.sourceforge.net/FAQ.html#is-nested-inline-markup-possible.