Hello, while I agree that this is technically an issue, I don't think it is an often seen issue in actual human-written text. Markdown is plain text formatted by and for humans. I don't think there are many cases where you would want to put two lists after each other without an introduction of sorts.
And on a side note: Gruber notes in the markdown spec that the actual numbers used in a numbered list are ignored. So data loss is already occuring here. Greetings, _Lasar On 2011-06-06, at 19:20, Alan Hogan wrote: > Esteemed human authors and robotic parse-bots: > > I recently discovered that most or all Markdown implementations, including > Gruber’s original in Perl, have an odd behavior with regards to lists that > follow each other. Namely, a bulleted list followed by a numbered list, or > vice-versa, is masked as if it were part of the first list (and of the first > list’s type.) > > For example, consider the following input: > > ~~~~~~ > > - Bulleted item > - Second bulleted item > > 1. Numbered list > 2. Second numbered item > > ~~~~~~ > > It will yield an output of one UL element with four LI children (themselves > containing some number of P tags, varying by implementation). > > Now, I realize full well that a blank line between list items causes the list > items to be given <p> tags. But the blank line above, to any reasonable > *human*, isn’t separating list items but rather *lists.* > > There is a fundamental problem in the above code: that it triggers > **non-obvious data loss.** > > The data is of course the numbering. > > The non-obviousness is due to the way the output formatting is essentially > correct, and only the list item markers are unexpected. A cursory scan of the > Markdown-transformed text — e.g., looking over a blog post before publishing > — will show no structural problems. Success, publish! … How long until the > author realizes his/her reference to “step #2” is actually referring to the > fourth bullet in an awkward list? > > One of the nicest things about Markdown is that once you get it, and it > doesn’t take long, then there is precious little by way of surprises it will > throw at you. > > If for no other reason, I think the counter-intuitiveness and “crap do I > really have to remember that you can’t follow a list by a list” moment are in > and of themselves reasons to change the behavior. Besides the data loss. > > I also struggle to imagine anyone who would be upset at the change. After > all, what end-user would *rely* on this feature to munge their list types? > > Alan > > _______________________________________________ > Markdown-Discuss mailing list > Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss -- _Lasar Liepins la...@liepins.net http://liepins.net/ http://10110101.net/ _______________________________________________ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
