Proposed table syntax

[Shaun Inman]

> I wonder if it'd be unwise to use `=` signs as the header delimiter,
> since they're already used for headers. More on this later.
I was thinking that they were a good choice *because* they're already 
used for headers. I do recognize that that would make it much more 
difficult to implement though. What I find odd is that there's been no 
resistance to suggesting that the table be tabbed in once given the 
conflict with code blocks--maybe the indentation was just 
misinterpreted as a sample code block?

Despite the conflict I think there should to be something that indents 
the table from the rest of the copy. How about a vertical pipe followed 
by at least one whitespace character:

	| Company					Description
	| ===========================================================
	| Apple Computer inc.		The maker of the Macintosh, iPod,
	| 						Quicktime and Firewire.
	| -----------------------------------------------------------
	| Microsoft				No need for a description.
	| 						More lines here

That would also allow for the reuse of the `=` and `-` for `<thead>` 
and `<tr>` delimiters respectively.

>
>
> * * *
>
> Michel Fortin <michel.fortin at michelf.com> wrote on 10/20/04 at 1:24pm:
>
>> First, sometime I prefer to fit my text in a table on more than one
>> line. A row separator could be useful in that case:
>>
>>   Company                 Description
>>   ===========================================================
>>   Apple Computer inc.     The maker of the Macintosh, iPod,
>>                           Quicktime and Firewire.
>>   -----------------------------------------------------------
>>   Microsoft               No need for a description.
>>   -----------------------------------------------------------
>>                           Multiple paragraphs?
>>
>>                           *   And lists?
>>
>>                               And why not code blocks.
>>
>>> Noticed the empty cell beside
>>> this one?
>>   -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> This pushes the line out a bit. I'd have to think about this. How
> frequently do people really need multiple paragraphs and lists and
> blockquotes inside a table? (Not counting someone using tables for
> page layout, of course, which isn't applicable to Markdown at all.)
>
> It's not that I don't think this is a nice idea. And it looks
> Markdown-y. I just don't want to add support for these features if
> they're only going to be used seldomly.
>
>
> * * *
>
> Jelks Cabaniss <jelks at jelks.nu> wrote on 10/20/04 at 2:20pm:
>
>> 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.
>
> My problem with Grutatext- and reST-style tables is that they're too
> complicated. There's no way Markdown should support things like
> rowspans and colspans. For that sort of thing, it's better and
> easier to just write raw HTML.
>
> I think all the `|` pipes end up getting noisy, visually. I think
> the reason they use them is to allow for the column and row spanning
> -- that sort of thing would be difficult or maybe even impossible to
> parse if you were just using spaces and tabs to separate table cells.
>
> The same goes for Textile's syntax, with regard to the pipes.
>
> reST's "simple" table style is a little closer to what might work
> for Markdown.
>
>
> * * *
>
> Angie Ahl <alists at vertebrate.co.uk> wrote on 10/20/04 at 7:45pm:
>
>> regex wise I'd say a cell separator (</td><td>) should be one or more
>> tabs and possibly, more than 1 space( but I can see problems with 
>> that.
>
> Requiring tabs would indeed make it easier to parse -- as you point
> out, using "more than 1 space" would make it easy to add a cell
> break by mistake. However, as Lou Quillio pointed out, tabs are
> problematic for anyone typing in a web browser textarea field.
>
> That said, Markdown is not optimized for people writing in textarea
> editors. It's optimized for people writing in decent text editors.
> But, if I had to guess, I'd wager that textarea fields are the most
> popular place where Markdown is used.
>
> So if we separate cells with whitespace, I think it'll have to work
> with both spaces and tabs. Maybe three-or-more spaces, instead of
> two-or-more?
>
>
>> Doing it with 1 or more tabs leads to a problem if there were empty
>> cells, you'd need to mark a cell as empty, maybe with something like
>> [empty]
>
> Empty cells are a big problem if we want to use whitespace to
> separate cells. (This is another reason why reSt, Grutatext, and
> Textile use `|`s, I'll bet.)
>
>
> -J.G.
> _______________________________________________
> Markdown-discuss mailing list
> Markdown-discuss at six.pairlist.net
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
>