Le 2009-02-25 à 22:00, Dr. Drang a écrit :
1. Regular Markdown--by which I mean Gruber's Markdown.pl--looks
good[^1] regardless of whether you're using proportional or
monospaced fonts. I can't think of any construct in which the width
of the characters makes a difference.
Well, if you want list items spanning on multiple lines to align
properly, it's pretty hard to do with spaces using a proportional font.
1. List item
spanning on more
than one line.
2. Plain text tables almost always look like crap *unless* you're
using a monospaced font, because columns always include a mixture of
visible characters and spaces. I suspect this is one of the reasons
Gruber hasn't put tables into Markdown.pl.
You can sometime use tabs in proportional fonts in some situations. It
helps aligning things correctly, and not only for tables, but also
with the list item example above.
Although if you later view it with a different font it'll probably
look like crap too.
3. Markdown was not intended to cover every situation; it's meant to
be a simple, readable substitute for simple (X)HTML. In this spirit,
we shouldn't expect table additions to Markdown to be able to handle
every type of table, just the simpler types. I like the table syntax
of PHP Markdown Extra and MultiMarkdown for this reason.
That's in part why I'm reticent to add a new type of table with cells
spanning on multiple rows to PHP Markdown Extra.
4. Using a script[^2] to align the pipes of a plain text table is
very practical if you're writing in a monospaced font. You can write
and edit the table quickly without regard to alignment, then make it
readable by applying the script to it. It's much easier to make
tables this way than to type them out in HTML.
Indeed. I never though of that, but it's a good idea.
That said, it's pretty easy to write a properly-aligned table without
a script too. I've been doing that for some time.
--
Michel Fortin
michel.for...@michelf.com
http://michelf.com/
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