Tables
Are there any standards emerging for how to represent tables in Markdown? Regards, - Daniel Dr Daniel Winterstein Winterwell Associates Ltd tel: 0772 5172 612 http://www.winterwell.com Registered in Scotland, company no. SC342991 ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Disambiguate List Item Followed by Code Block
Howdy, Quick question: Since list items with multiple paragraphs need to be indented four spaces, and code blocks are also indented four spaces, is there any way to disambiguate a list followed by a code block? Example: * This is a list item. * And so is this. Is this a second paragraph in the second list item, or a code block? It looks like Markdown.pl and discount agree that it should be a second paragraph. If that is indeed the standard, what should I do if I actually want to follow a list with a code block? Many thanks, David ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: Disambiguate List Item Followed by Code Block
+++ David E. Wheeler [Feb 18 09 09:33 ]: Howdy, Quick question: Since list items with multiple paragraphs need to be indented four spaces, and code blocks are also indented four spaces, is there any way to disambiguate a list followed by a code block? Example: * This is a list item. * And so is this. Is this a second paragraph in the second list item, or a code block? It looks like Markdown.pl and discount agree that it should be a second paragraph. If that is indeed the standard, what should I do if I actually want to follow a list with a code block? You can insert an HTML comment between them. It's a kludge, but that's the only way I know of. * This is a list item. * And so is this. !-- end of list -- Definitely a code block. ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: Tables
+++ Daniel Winterstein [Feb 18 09 08:01 ]: Are there any standards emerging for how to represent tables in Markdown? The only standard way is to use HTML. Different extensions to markdown syntax have made different decisions about tables: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#tables http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/#table http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/users_guide/multimarkdown_syntax_guide/ If you look in the archives of this list, you'll find some discussion of the pros and cons of various approaches. But there's no emerging standard, to my knowledge. John ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: Disambiguate List Item Followed by Code Block
On Feb 18, 2009, at 10:19 AM, Waylan Limberg wrote: This was a hotly discussed issue a while back with all sorts of suggestions. Search the archives. I believe the final consensus was to create an alternate markup for codeblocks, which address both this use case and well as consecutive, but separate, codeblocks. However, I believe that only PHP Extra and Python implementations have implemented fenced code blocks. http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/#fenced-code-blocks Ah, right, I forgot about those. Definitely a better workaround. Thanks, David ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
A Modest Definition List Proposal
Howdy, I've been thinking a lot about definition list syntax, and what I did and didn't like about the PHP Markdown Extra syntax (which seems to be a de-facto standard, discount notwithstanding, yes?). What I came up with is a single character change to the PHP Markdown Extra syntax. I just published a detailed explanation of my thoughts and reasoning for this on [my blog](http://justatheory.com/computers/markup/modest-markdown-proposal.html ). If you would excuse the temerity of my late entry into what I'm sure has been a contentious issue, I would love feedback. In a nutshell, I embrace the PHP Markdown Extra syntax, with one change: I would like to see the colon replaced with a tilde (for backwards compatibility, both should be supported). That means that a simple definition list would look like this: Apple: ~ Pomaceous fruit of plants of the genus Malus in the family Rosaceae. ~ An american computer company. Orange: ~ The fruit of an evergreen tree of the genus Citrus. And a more complicated one would look like this: Term 1: ~ This is a definition with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. ~ Second definition for term 1, also wrapped in a paragraph because of the blank line preceding it. Term 2: ~ This definition has a code block, a blockquote and a list. code block. block quote on two lines. 1. first list item 2. second list item See my blog entry for more detailed description of why I prefer the tilde to the colon for this purpose. The best things about it are that it makes for a more natural bullet, already has precedent in dictionaries, and suggest equivalency if you're familiar with mathematics, which makes for a nice mnemonic. Comments? Has this ship already sailed? Best, David ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: A Modest Definition List Proposal
On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 1:44 PM, David E. Wheeler da...@kineticode.com wrote: [snip] In a nutshell, I embrace the PHP Markdown Extra syntax, with one change: I would like to see the colon replaced with a tilde (for backwards compatibility, both should be supported). That means that a simple definition list would look like this: [snip] Comments? Has this ship already sailed? You make a convincing argument. And I must admit your proposal is very nice to look at/read/write. But if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The current implementation was set before I came along some few years ago, and I have never searched through the archives to see how it came about or why. But, people have been using it for this long without issue and there are already numerous existing documents out there that use it, so I see no reason to change it. In fact that last point (numerous existing documents) seems to be the de-facto response to any suggested changes on this list - and understandably so. No doubt that's why you suggested leaving the existing syntax in place, but then we would have two ways to define deflists. What happens when an author mixes the two? Ack! Yeah, this ship has sailed IMO. -- \X/ /-\ `/ |_ /-\ |\| Waylan Limberg ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: A Modest Definition List Proposal
On Feb 18, 2009, at 12:19 PM, Waylan Limberg wrote:
Comments? Has this ship already sailed?
You make a convincing argument. And I must admit your proposal is very
nice to look at/read/write.
Thank you.
But if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The current implementation was set before I came along some few years
ago, and I have never searched through the archives to see how it came
about or why. But, people have been using it for this long without
issue and there are already numerous existing documents out there that
use it, so I see no reason to change it. In fact that last point
(numerous existing documents) seems to be the de-facto response to any
suggested changes on this list - and understandably so. No doubt
that's why you suggested leaving the existing syntax in place, but
then we would have two ways to define deflists. What happens when an
author mixes the two? Ack! Yeah, this ship has sailed IMO.
I don't think it's a problem to have two different kinds of bullets
for definition list items; after all, you can already use +, -, or *
for unordered lists. And you can mix them without penalty, so the same
would be true here.
FWIW, the change to MultiMarkdown.pl to make this work would just be
this:
--- bin/MultiMarkdown.pl.orig 2008-01-18 15:08:43.0 -0800
+++ bin/MultiMarkdown.pl2009-02-18 12:28:47.0 -0800
@@ -2559,7 +2559,7 @@
my $definition = qr{
\n?[ ]{0,$less_than_tab}
- \:[ \t]+(.*?)\n
+ [:~][ \t]+(.*?)\n
((?=\n*[ ]{0,$less_than_tab}\S)|\n\n|\Z) # Lookahead for non-space
at line-start,
# two returns, or end of doc
}sx;
Plus documentation, of course. Doesn't get much simpler than that.
Thanks for your reply.
Best,
David
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Re: A Modest Definition List Proposal
On Feb 18, 2009, at 10:44 AM, David E. Wheeler wrote: See my blog entry for more detailed description of why I prefer the tilde to the colon for this purpose. The best things about it are that it makes for a more natural bullet, already has precedent in dictionaries, and suggest equivalency if you're familiar with mathematics, which makes for a nice mnemonic. Comments? Has this ship already sailed? Aristotle was kind enough to point me to some older posts on the subject of definition lists, where I saw this message from Mssr. Gruber: On Jul 27, 2005, at 7:33 AM, John Gruber wrote: And since the ones with multiple terms and/or definitions are the exception, not the norm, I think in the common cases, you'd wind up with something that looks like this: Term 1:: Definition a blah blah blah blah blah Term 2:: Definition b foo bar baz Term 3:: Definition c even more blah blah blah Was this ever implemented? I haven't noticed it in the documentation for PHP Markdown Extra or MultiMarkdown. I think that, using the tilde as I've suggested in this thread, this can be even better: Term 1 ~ Definition a blah blah blah blah blah Term 2 ~ Definition b foo bar baz Term 3 ~ Definition c even more blah blah blah Basically, it's the same rule, only you don't have to have a newline before the definition starts. Also, the single ~ is a little less “unnatural” looking than the double : (and I say that as a Perl hacker, so I'm used to “::”!). Best, David ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: A Modest Definition List Proposal
On Feb 18, 2009, at 2:50 PM, Tom Humiston wrote: A problem I see with your suggestion about not including newlines is that interpreting the form xxx ~ yyy as a DT/DD pair precludes the use of ~ (space-tilde-space) in some other ways it's likely to be used ~ for instance, as an alternative to the plain hyphen. Yeah. I think ~~ would work okay, too, and gets around that problem. Term 1 ~~ Definition a blah blah blah blah blah Term 2 ~~ Definition b foo bar baz Term 3 ~~ Definition c even more blah blah blah Although I think that it's a bit of a red herring. I also suppose that's why the suggestion in 2005 was for double colons. Colon-newline seems pretty clear, if anything is. (Mind you, I am NOT involved in writing implementations whatsoever; I'm just watching the mailing list.) I didn't see anyone suggest tilde for definitions in 2005, though I did notice that Aristotle tried it out for terms. I agree with him that tildes didn't work so well there. :-) Best, David ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: A Modest Definition List Proposal
Yeah, Markdown users in the hard sciences would trigger that constantly. best, Joe On 2/18/09, Yuri Takhteyev qarama...@gmail.com wrote: Right. I actually think that using ~ as a range operator (essentially) is fairly rare outside of electronic circles, at least in US English. In other words, by at least 5% of the world population. :) But even just looking at the US English, ~ is often used for approximation, for the home directory, for equivalence, etc. So, things like The cost is ~ $3, cd to ~ before doing this, The N needs a ~ over it, If we assume x ~ y, then will all suddenly become definition lists? Term 1 o Definition a blah blah blah blah blah Term 2 o Definition b foo bar baz Term 3 o Definition c even more blah blah blah É. O unico problema é o o do Portugues, que é um artigo nessa linguagem. (Our friend o is a _word_ in some languages.) - yuri -- http://spu.tnik.org/ ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss -- Joseph Lorenzo Hall ACCURATE Postdoctoral Research Associate UC Berkeley School of Information Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy http://josephhall.org/ ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: A Modest Definition List Proposal
On Feb 18, 2009, at 4:37 PM, Yuri Takhteyev wrote: Right. I actually think that using ~ as a range operator (essentially) is fairly rare outside of electronic circles, at least in US English. In other words, by at least 5% of the world population. :) But even just looking at the US English, ~ is often used for approximation, for the home directory, for equivalence, etc. So, things like The cost is ~ $3, cd to ~ before doing this, The N needs a ~ over it, If we assume x ~ y, then will all suddenly become definition lists? Yeah, okay. Forget the one-line format, then. No one has implemented it so far anyway, as near as I can tell. :-) Term 1 o Definition a blah blah blah blah blah Term 2 o Definition b foo bar baz Term 3 o Definition c even more blah blah blah É. O unico problema é o o do Portugues, que é um artigo nessa linguagem. (Our friend o is a _word_ in some languages.) D'oh! Oh yeah! Sorry for the cultural imperialism. :-) Best, David ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: Disambiguate List Item Followed by Code Block
+++ Waylan Limberg [Feb 18 09 13:19 ]: On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 12:33 PM, David E. Wheeler da...@kineticode.com wrote: Howdy, Quick question: Since list items with multiple paragraphs need to be indented four spaces, and code blocks are also indented four spaces, is there any way to disambiguate a list followed by a code block? This was a hotly discussed issue a while back with all sorts of suggestions. Search the archives. I believe the final consensus was to create an alternate markup for codeblocks, which address both this use case and well as consecutive, but separate, codeblocks. However, I believe that only PHP Extra and Python implementations have implemented fenced code blocks. http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/#fenced-code-blocks pandoc too: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#delimited-code-blocks ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: A Modest Definition List Proposal
* David E. Wheeler da...@kineticode.com [2009-02-19 02:00]: Yeah, okay. […] D’oh! Oh yeah! Told you it is a thorny problem. :-( It *looks* simple, yeah… Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // http://plasmasturm.org/ ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
Re: A Modest Definition List Proposal
On Feb 18, 2009, at 6:59 PM, Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote: Yeah, okay. […] D’oh! Oh yeah! Told you it is a thorny problem. :-( It *looks* simple, yeah… I still think that ~ works well (at least as well as :) in a non- single-line usage, which is all that's currently implemented with :, anyway. That said, there is no way to get any standard blessed as official here aside from Gruber adding it to Markdown.pl, right? Except for folks adding their own preferred methods to the existing implementations… Best, David ___ Markdown-Discuss mailing list Markdown-Discuss@six.pairlist.net http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
