Ordered List Syntax Suggested Change

[Sean Santry]

On Mar 12, 2004, at 23:54, John Gruber wrote:

> Sean Santry <markdown at seansantry.com> wrote on 03/12/04 at 9:56a:
>
>> 3563. First
>> 33. Second
>> 900309237515. Third
>>
>> and produce an HTML document that renders as
>>
>> 1. First
>> 2. Second
>> 3. Third
>
> Sure, that would definitely be odd. But the oddity wouldn't be in
> Markdown's behavior -- it'd be in the fact that you wrote such an
> oddly-numbered list.

Agreed, though I chose an poor example. I should have written a list 
more likely to have been the result of changed ordering, such as

1. Faith
3. Hope
2. Love

Perhaps what I want is a text editor feature to fix the numbering, not 
a Markdown syntax.

> E.g., I really *am* worried about the fact that people might write:
>
>     1984. What a great year.

This is a concern. As you're aware there are lots of ways to denote 
numbered lists aside from `\d+\.', maybe wrap the digits in parentheses 
or square brackets?

> What I *might* consider is something like this:
>
> 1.  First
> #.  Second
> #.  Third
>

This would be preferable. I chose `+' first because Markdown uses `#' 
for headers, but attaching the period makes it look different enough 
that it shouldn't be confusing.

- Sean