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

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2008-03-02 à 22:14, Seumas Mac Uilleachan a écrit :


> What's needed is a way to distinguish your edge case from the  

> general case where it would be a list. Do you use two white spaces  

> to preserve the line breaks? Perhaps that could be the trigger in  

> this case - a line ending in two white spaces prevents the next line  

> from being formatted as a new list.


I don't think that's a good idea. Two spaces at the end of a line  
means a line break, not an end of the current paragraph.


> I just tested this edge case in PHP Markdown Extra and it does the  

> same thing (both with and without the two white spaces for newlines).


Indeed. I'm not sure what could be done here however, but here is an  
idea.

John changed things a long time ago now so that it doesn't pose a  
problem for text at the root of the document by forcing a blank line  
to be present before a list when not inside a list. I'm thinking that  
we could do the same for the content of list item parsed as block- 
level content. For instance, here you would have a nested ordered list:

     *   Blah blah blah
         1. blah blah
     *   Blah blah blah

Here too:

     *   Blah blah blah

         1. blah blah

     *   Blah blah blah

But not in the next examples. Here the "1." list marker wouldn't be  
accepted because we're in a block-level list element (since there is a  
blank line between the two items):


     *   Blah blah blah
         1. blah blah

     *   Blah blah blah

Same here, because there is a blank line inside the list item:

     *   Blah blah blah

         Blah blah blah
         1. blah blah
     *   Blah blah blah

Perhaps that's a too subtle distinction, but it's my preferred  
solution to date.


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/