Bug: INS/DEL in block context (1.04b)

[John Gruber]

Jay Allen <markdown at openwire.com> wrote on 04/28/04 at 4:57p:

> Now, the feature request: It would be grand if 
> Markdown could format INS and DEL in block-level context for us. 
> Perhaps something like:
> 
> +datetime=2004-04-26T19:52:00+01:00
> +cite=http://blah.com
> +This is an update
> +
> +Ain't it grand
> 
> -datetime=2004-04-26T19:52:00+01:00
> -cite=http://blah.com
> -This is a deleted section.
> -
> -Ain't it sad
> 
> Or something like that.
> 
> Any thoughts on bug or feature request?


With regard to the feature request, I'm going to say no.

For one thing, I don't see how we can add support for block-level
ins/del without supporting span-level ins/del. Which means we'd be
adding *four* new thing to the syntax.

Second, as for your specific suggestion above, those tokens --
line-leading `+` and `-` -- are already spoken for. They're going to
be optional synonyms for `*` for creating unordered lists.

It's certainly not a bad idea. But I think `<ins>` and `<del>` are
good examples of the sort of HTML tags where it's just as good to
use Markdown's support for inline HTML than to add special
punctuation for them.

-J.G.