evolving the spec (was: forking Markdown.pl?)

[Waylan Limberg]

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joehall at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 8:52 AM, Thomas Nichols <nichols7 at googlemail.com> wrote:

>  >

>  >  Having a spec/ruleset/syntax definition seems an admirable goal; does

>  >  this necessarily imply that, for example, you should not be able to

>  >  begin a list item with zero to three spaces, at your discretion? This

>  >  seems rather at odds with the overall theme of your mail, with which I

>  >  heartily agree.

>

[snip]

>

>  Markdown sees that "  2008." as a list item.

>


And this is why I think the spaces should go. It leaves things a
little *too* ambiguous.

In any event, this thread is not about list syntax, but whether we
want/need a new spec/rule set. I knew the list issue would bring a few
more opinions to the table, so thanks for sharing (yeah, it was bait).
Sometimes, as one of those implementers I have to remind myself of
that originating philosophy behind Markdown. That's the only thing
keeping me from making the implementation I work on more strict. Well,
the only thing except those real world use cases like the ones all
those people passionate about keeping whitespace before list items
have.

Btw, the more I think about this, the more I don't see a *need* for a
new rule-set as much as I *want* one. When looked at in the context of
the philosophy, the current rules pretty much stand on their own.
However, a central (perhaps non-implementation specific) location for
various extensions (alternate behaviors) to define their syntax would
be nice.



-- 
----
Waylan Limberg
waylan at gmail.com