New link syntax

[Lou Quillio]

On Mar 31, 2004, at 3:41 AM, european bob wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-03-31 at 02:38, Lou Quillio wrote:
>> On the subject of hacks, I wonder if MD shouldn't abstract the various
>> delimiters into an easily-editable lookup array.  Easier to tinker, 
>> and
>> might solve some localization issues later.  Don't see it in the
>> source, but I'm way out of my Perl depth.
>
> If you're talking about storing the second-bracket references (i.e.,
> [][this bit]) ...

No, I was thinking of an array in the the source code, to contain the 
characters significant to MD.  On reflection this isn't so valuable:  
the characters in use seem to be reliably language-neutral, and it may 
not be wise to *promote* hacking the syntax.  Was just a thought.

> That would make me sort-of against Aaron's
> proposal on the basis that the resolution algo would be extremely hard
> to implement, and potentially ambiguous.

Explicit targets need explicit anchors.  Interpreted anchors are 
conceptually dangerous, and won't go back in the bottle once you let 
them out.  They'd threaten the project for little gain.  You could 
reduce the threat but not eliminate it ... because it's conceptual.

> I do like the proposed link syntax, [this works for me] quite well.

Yep, works.  Agree.  The user's responsible for integrity though.

> could/should a Markdown interpreter generate errors,
> and how should they be passed to the user?

Opposed.  Shifts responsibility from the user to MD.  There'd be no end 
to it.  What's an error?

> (This also begs a separate question; is
> there such a thing as a Markdown validator?

Opposed.  Again, what's an error?  Right now, MD is agnostic.  You do 
this, you get that.  There's no such thing as an error.  That's leaner 
and healthier, imo.

LQ