Proposed table syntax

Shaun Inman markdown at shauninman.com
Wed Oct 20 14:46:31 EDT 2004


Looks like I may have opened a can of worms here. :)

I don't think any of those syntactical options look very appealing, not 
to type, not to parse and visually they're not very appealing either. 
The heavy piping and the extra typing involved to create it (just for 
formatting purposes) would dissuade me from using it. It's easier to 
write straight html than worry about that stuff falling out of 
alignment as you update the contents of the table. Textile's is the 
least offensive but solves the complexity problem at the expense of 
readability.

In my proposal, cells are separated by 4 or more spaces or 1 or more 
tabs. And there is only one instance of horizontal piping to avoid 
having to make too many edits when updating the contents of the cells.

.............................

Shaun Inman
http://www.shauninman.com/

On Oct 20, 2004, at 2:20 PM, Jelks Cabaniss wrote:

> Precedents exist.  See for example [reStructuredText]'s, [Grutatext]'s 
> and
> [TexTile]'s implementations.
>
> [reStructuredText]: http://tinyurl.com/5s7mk#tables
> [Grutatext]: http://www.triptico.com/download/README_grutatxt
> [TexTile]: http://www.textpattern.com/help/?item=table
>
> Personally, I prefer the first two -- which are quite similar.
>
> PS.  Omitting trailing `[]` in links above because it looks bizarre 
> and,
> well, hope springs eternal...  :)
>
>
> /Jelks
>
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