on the philosophical aspects of a specification

[Waylan Limberg]

On 4 Mar 2008 10:15:10 -0800, david parsons <orc at pell.portland.or.us> wrote:

>

>    I'm not surprised when

>

>  1986.  What a great season.

>

>    generates a list item, because the existing spec tells me that

>

>    ``[...]a _number-period-space_ sequence at the beginning of a line[...]''

>

>    will trigger an ordered list.

>


I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before, but the period
should be escapable and in fact, it is. That, I believe is the answer
to this problem of a line that begins with a number-period-space
sequence.

    1986\. What a great season.

becomes:

    <p>1986. What a great season.</p>

I just checked markdown.pl, php & python and it works correctly in all three.


>

>

>    But what's the intent of ***hello*, sailor**   ?

>

>    Should it produce

>     1. <strong><em>hello</em>, sailor</strong>

>     2. <strong>*hello*, sailor</strong>

>     3. *<strong>hello*, sailor</strong>

>     4. ***hello<em>, sailor<strong>

>     5. ***hello*, sailor**

>     6. <em><strong>hello</strong></em><strong>, sailor</strong>

>     7. <em><strong>hello</em>, sailor</strong> (which makes baby XML cry) ?

>

>    How about **Hello, sailor ?

>

>    Is it <strong>Hello, sailor, **Hello, sailor, or <em></em>Hello, sailor?

>

>    And how about _________cut here_________ ?

>

>

>    Formal specifications are written to avoid surprises in the

>    implementations;    As a user (and there's no way I'd have written an

>    implementation if I wasn't a user) of the language I'd like to avoid

>    surprises when I go between the markdown documents on my website,

>    posts on my weblog, or posts on someone else's wiki and/or weblog.

>

>

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>




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