More continuing text for tables

[David E. Wheeler]

On Jun 23, 2009, at 6:43 PM, Simon Bull wrote:


> Explicit row markers do _work_, but they are too verbose for my  

> liking.

> They are more work to write, and don't read as cleanly.  The colon  

> syntax

> _works_ too, and it is cleaner, and I think having a source document  

> which

> is natural to write, and easy to read is important.


+1, although sometimes, with really busy tables, they make things  
clearer.


> All that aside, it is support for the continued text *feature* that  

> I am

> most interested in.  If I have to live with explicit line breaks, I  

> guess I

> will.  But it would seem a shame, given the alternative.


I agree, but what I mean by "busy tables" is when you have a table  
with multicolumn cells *and* multirow rows. My blog entry has a decent  
example of this:


|               |            Grouping            ||

+---------------+---------------------------------+

| First Header  |  Second Header  |  Third Header |

+---------------+-----------------+---------------+

| Content       |           *Long Cell*          ||

: continued     :                                ::

: content       :                                ::

| Content       |    **Cell**     |          Cell |

: continued     :                 :               :

: content       :                 :               :



| New section   |      More       |          Data |

| And more      |             And more           ||

  [Prototype table]

It starts to get a little confusing in this case, so I'd like, for  
more complicated tables, to alternatively be able to designate rows  
like so:


|               |            Grouping            ||

+===============+=================================+

| First Header  |  Second Header  |  Third Header |

+===============+=================================+

| Content       |           *Long Cell*          ||

: continued     :                                ::

: content       :                                ::

+---------------+---------------------------------+

| Content       |    **Cell**     |          Cell |

: continued     :                 :               :

: content       :                 :               :

+---------------+---------------------------------+

+---------------+---------------------------------+

| New section   |      More       |          Data |

+---------------+---------------------------------+

| And more      |             And more           ||

+---------------+---------------------------------+
  [Prototype table]

You can distinguish the one style from the other by the use of =s in  
the header instead of -s.


> However, I strongly agree that the tilde could be used in for  

> definition

> lists, thereby removing the ambiguity between colons used as cell  

> delimiters

> and those used in definition lists.


Thanks! They stand out better, too, in most fonts.

Best,

David