spaces and newlines before list markers (was: evolving the spec)

[Thomas Nichols]

Joseph Lorenzo Hall wrote on 2008/03/02 18:26:

> On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 10:00 AM, John Fraser <john at attacklab.net> wrote:

>   

>>  Tightening up indentation rules is definitely a breaking change, and I

>>  don't see any payoff for users here.  If anything, we should be making

>>  indentation rules more lenient.

>>     

>

> My only desire is to figure out a way to allow the

> whitspace-before-list-marker and also avoid the more general class of

> "bugs" where a list is triggered by a sentence ending with a number on

> an indented newline.

>

> The reference citation I sent out on another thread is one example but

> anything of the following form will trigger this:

>

> * This is a list item with a hanging indent ending with a number,

>   4. The rest is considered a child of a new ordered list, no matter

>   what I do to this paragraph (other than rephrase to get rid of the

>   hanging-indented digit+dot).

>

> Which produces

>

>     <ul>

>     <li>This is a list item with a hanging indent ending with a number,

>     <ol><li>The rest is considered a child of a new ordered list, no matter

>     what I do to this paragraph (other than rephrase to get rid of the

>     hanging-indented digit+dot).</li></ol></li>

>     </ul>

>

> Is this something we're comfortable with?  If not, can we come up with

> something that avoids this? best, Joe

>

>   


Actually, when I first read your example I was confused -- I thought 
'4.' was a second-level bullet point, despite the comma on the preceding 
line. If a human (admittedly a very tired one) can make this 
interpretation, I can live with a Markdown processor making it also.

John's proposed approach in 
http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2007-July/000690.html 
seems to fit well with what a naive (tired) human might expect to 
happen. As ever, YMMV.

-- Thomas.