[Pmwiki-users] Re: Idea for extension of special list syntax

[chr@home.se]

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Neil Herber wrote:

> At 2005-01-21  07:38 AM -0700, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
> >  In addition
> >to being able to continue the text of a list item, authors would also
> >like to be able to embed paragraphs, and even preformatted text, within
> >list items.  So, I'd prefer to explore solutions that enable this
> >capability as well, rather than stop short with just the continue
> >the current paragraph within a list item.
> 
> In the interest of sticking to PmWiki principles and making it easiest for 
> writers, I would suggest that any markup that relies on the number of 
> leading spaces to determine nesting level is a "bad thing" (TM Martha Stewart).
> 
> Its is impossible to see the spaces, and counting them requires counting 
> right-arrow movements.

I'd just like to point out three things. (I'm not sure if Neil refers to
my original suggestion here or the more advanced versions with more
functionality, but just in case...).

First, my main motivation for suggesting this "horizontal-alignment-lets-
-you-continue-an-item" was to make it more convenient/easier for writers.
That should be obvious since no new functionality is actually added.

Secondly, I don't think anyone is suggesting that we remove the line
continuation character, nor force people to write items on more than one
line - those alternatives will still be there. In other words, the
original suggestion would merely be a "cleaner" way of writing long items.

Finally, I'd like to make a comment about counting characters versus
seeing/detecting horizontal alignment. I don't think my original
suggestion involves counting spaces. Instead, I think it is about the
relative horizonal alignment. For the record, I also find counting spaces
tricky and error prone. OTOH, seeing alignment is easy... how difficult is 
it to spot the misaligned line in the following example?

	Some text bla bla bla
	* First item
	  More text of first time.
	  Another item.
	  Yet another line.
	   Oops, this line is too much indented.. by mistake?
	  One more line
	* Another item

To me that line sticks out like a sore spot.. but maybe I've been
programming too much.. Anyway, AFAIK, spotting the misalignment is
independent of how much it is indented so this shouldn't depend on
counting the n:o characters at all. Consider the same example with more
indentation:

	Some text bla bla bla
	*      First item
	       More text of first time.
	       Another item.
	       Yet another line.
	        Oops, this line is too much indented.. by mistake?
	       One more line
	* Another item

Howver, I think the ability to easily spot misalignment in practice
requires the lines to be consequitive. This means that the alignment
principle may not be practical for advanced examples with items that
continue on a different level. I assume this is what you were thinking of
Neil?

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr