Ordered list syntax.

[Daniel Axelrod]

On Wednesday, March 31, 2004, at 01:53  AM, John Gruber wrote:
> Perhaps one way to do it could be to state that a top-level list
> must have a blank line preceding it, but not sub-lists. This would
> solve many, but not all, of the potential conflicts.

This is sort of what I was suggesting in  
<http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2004-March/ 
000246.html>, but with a few additions:

On Saturday, March 27, 2004, at 10:18  AM, Daniel Axelrod wrote:
> All right. HTML does not allow lists inside paragraphs, how about  
> these rules?
>
> 1. There must be a blank line between a paragraph and the start of a  
> list.
> 2. If a sublist follows a list item that is not a paragraph, a blank  
> line is not necessary before the sublist.
> 3. If a sublist follows a list item that *is* a paragraph, a blank  
> line is necessary to separate the paragraph and the sublist. (This is  
> really just rule 1.)
>
> These would make it impossible for wrapping a paragraph to  
> accidentally trigger the beginning of a list.
>
> The only time a problem might occur is in wrapped non-paragraph list  
> items:
>
> 	1. This is a list item.
> 	2. So's this.
> 	3. The number eight is written in Arabic numerals as
> 	8. It is written in roman numerals as VIII.
> 	4. Here is another list item.
>
> I don't actually think this is a problem, however, because a *human*  
> would mistake the `8. ` as a list item heading, until they read it in  
> context. This means that if Markdown thought it was a list item, the  
> person would look at their source document, realize that it really  
> *did* look like a list item, and change the wrapping.
>
>
> Another problem might this:
>
> 	1. This is a list item.
> 	2. So's this.
> 	3. The number eight is written in Arabic numerals as
> 	    8. It is written in roman numerals as VIII.
> 	4. Here is another list item.
>
> Is that `8. ` part of the wrapped and indented list item, or is it a  
> sublist? I also don't think this would be a huge deal, because the  
> person will see that Markdown thought it was a nested list, look at  
> their source document realize it *did* look like a nested list, and  
> change it.
>
> The problem with accidentally triggering lists is only outside of any  
> list context. If a person has a normal paragraph that gets sliced and  
> diced into list items, they will have a hard time figuring out what  
> went wrong. On the other hand, if they have a list, they're going to  
> be thinking in the context of a list, so they're going to be more  
> careful with what looks like a list item, and what doesn't.
>
> I don't think it's reasonable to expect Markup to read a document  
> better than a human who's glancing over the document would.