On Feb 26, 2009, at 9:51 AM, I wrote:
I can see that really opened a can of worms here. Sorry about that.
I'll have to move up my plan to formally propose a table syntax. The
comment that started this sub-thread was a throwaway line, really. I
probably should have omitted it.
And then, on Feb 26, 2009, at 3:28 PM, John Gruber wrote:
3. A hypothetical official table syntax for Markdown will almost
certainly look very much, if not exactly, like Michel's table syntax
in PHP Markdown Extra.
Well, perhaps it's foolish of me, but since I'd already spent several
hours writing it up before I saw that post, I went ahead and finished
my proposal as an informal request for comments, which I've [blogged
here][]:
[blogged here]
http://www.justatheory.com/computers/markup/markdown-table-rfc.html
The high-level overview is this:
* I looked at prior art from database clients and MultiMarkdown
* I identified a few things I liked in the DB clients that aren't
in MultiMarkdown (continuing lines, implicit cell alignment)
* I offered some refinements of the MultiMarkdown syntax
Those refinements, in a nutshell, are, simply:
* Implicit cell alignment using space characters, rather than
the explicit formatting hints in the header lines
* Cell content continuation using : for succeeding lines
* Stricter use of space, for proper alignment in plain text (which
all of the MultiMarkdown examples I’ve seen tend to do anyway)
* Allow + to separate columns in the header-demarking lines
* A table does not have to start right at the beginning of a line
Many if not all of these refinements can preserve compatibility with
what's already there, although such was not my goal. Overall, what I
was concentrating on was how I'd like tables to look in plain text,
given how often I've created them in code documentation, and how often
I look at them in terminal-based database clients. I like what I've
come up with, drawing as it does on solid prior art, and would
appreciate those who take an interest in such arcana taking a look.
Again, I appreciate how friendly and willing the folks have been on
this list, especially to a presumptuous n00b like myself, and hope to
continue to contribute to that for a long time.
Best,
David
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