On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 9:39 AM, Seumas Mac Uilleachan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Aristotle Pagaltzis wrote: > > * Michel Fortin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2008-03-05 05:10]: > > > >> A better question is what to do with this: > >> > >> *hello **dear* boy** > >> > > > > That's a very good question. Here's a counterquestion: what does > > a human reader see in that text? Based on the visual apperance I > > think I would make it translate to this: > > > > <em>hello <strong>dear</strong> boy</em>
Ah, so your assuming the parser should automatically close unclosed tags much as a browser in quirks mode does. Sure, you and I understand how that works, but should we expect authors who are unfamiliar with html to get that? I doubt it. I also suspect that it's those same authors that will most likely purposely write a document containing text formatted like that. I agree with Seumas that such people would expect: > > <em>hello <strong>dear</em> boy</strong> Yeah, we could give them output that displays as they expect and fix it under the hood by doing: > <em>hello <strong>dear</strong></em><strong> boy</strong> > But, the output **I** would expect is one of: <em>hello </em><em>dear</em> boy** <em>hello **dear</em> boy** *hello <strong>dear* boy</strong> Yeah, I think we should force authors to close any tags they open. If they don't, then the text is assumed to be literal, not markup. Maybe that's too restrictive for some peoples taste. But that's what I see when I look at that text. In my mind I keep going back and forth between the three and can never decide which the author intended. Finally, I cringe as I realize they probably intended what Seumas suggested. If we want to throw valid markup to the wind, then sure, Seumans first suggestion (and how markdown.pl currently works) is the answer. Otherwise, any one of my suggestions could be the anwser. This tells the author (who hopefully is previewing anyway) that they have an error in their markup and need to make a change. With Aristotle's suggested output, those unfamiliar with html will, IMO, not be able to easily discern why the output doesn't match their expectations. However, by leaving some of the markup literal, they have some clues to work with. To me, that is an important factor that seems to be ignored by some here. Sometimes, IMO, the best thing to do is to pass the markup through as literal text and give the author a clue that his formatting is unclear! -- ---- Waylan Limberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Markdown-Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
