More continuing text for tables

[Waylan Limberg]

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 5:01 PM, David E. Wheeler<david at kineticode.com> wrote:

> On Jun 22, 2009, at 9:01 PM, Simon Bull wrote:

>

>>    * The colon is used more commonly in content than the pipe, and,

>>    * ':' is markdown syntax denoting a definition list.

>

> Actually, it's in used for a definition list in MultiMarkdown. Markdown does

> not support definition lists. I have a [related proposal][] for definition

> lists that's identical to what MM does, except that it uses ~ instead of :,

> both because it's easier to see as a bullet in many fonts, and because it's

> not all that common.


Actually, PHP Markdown Extra [1], Python-Markdown [2], and Pandoc [3]
all support definition lists using  the colon as well. And that's only
the ones I'm familiar with. There may be others. The point is, I think
this is an established enough syntax used by enough people who have
written enough documents, that it would be a little to painful to
change now. Of course, if anyone wanted to introduce an alternate
syntax using the tilde, they certainly can. However, I don't believe
your proposal mitigates Simon's concern regarding overuse of the
colon. In fact, it would seem reasonable to expect that the very
implementations which correctly support definition lists (using
colons) would be the first to implement any new alternate table
syntax, whether it uses colons or not.

[1]: http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/extra/#def-list
[2]: http://www.freewisdom.org/projects/python-markdown/Definition_Lists
[3]: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#definition-lists


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Waylan Limberg