Hello,
I read David Wheeler's table proposal[1] for Markdown and very much
agree with his conclusion and PostgreSQL-inspired proposed format. I
also read the mailing list archives for 2009 but did not find any
clear concesus on whether DW's format was officially accepted (I hope
it is soon!).
However, I want to ask: has anyone considered taking these simple
ASCII table drawings to the next level of realism with Unicode box
drawing characters[2]? I have long admired the w3m browser[3]'s
ability to render HTML tables using Unicode box drawing characters.
For example, w3m renders this[4] demo page as follows[5]:
A more complex table-within-a table.
An inner table showing a variety of headings and data items.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Inner Table │
├───────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ Head1 │
│ CORNER ├────────────────────────────┬───────────────┤
│ │ │ Head3 │
├───────────┬───────┤ Head2 ├──────┬────────┤
│ Head4 │ Head5 │ │Head6 │ │
Outer ├───────────┼───────┼────────────────────────────┼──────┴────────┤
Table │A │ │ • Lists can be table data │ Two Wide │
│ │ │ • Images can be table data│ │
├───────────┤ ├────────────────────────────┼──────┬────────┤
│ │Two │A Form in a table: Your age:│ │ │
│ │Tall │ [ ] │ No │Multiple│
│HTML │ │ What is your favorite ice │border│line │
│Station │ │ cream? │Little│item │
│ │ │ [Chocolate ] │Table │ │
│ │ │ [OK] [Cancel] │ │ │
└───────────┴───────┴────────────────────────────┴──────┴────────┘
What if Markdown used Unicode characters to express tables in this manner?
All we need are two essential subsets of the Unicode box drawing characters:
* thin ones for normal cells: ┌ ┐ └ ┘ ─ │
* thick ones for heading cells: ╔ ╗ ╚ ╝ ═ ║
Thanks for your consideration.
[1]: http://justatheory.com/computers/markup/markdown-table-rfc.html
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_drawing_characters
[3]: http://w3m.sourceforge.net/
[4]: http://www.december.com/html/demo/table.html
[5]: http://snk.tuxfamily.org/tmp/w3m-tables.png
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