link soup

[A. Pagaltzis]

* Yuri T. <qaramazov at gmail.com> [2005-08-22 03:05]:

> This seems flexible enough. […] I am curious if there is a way

> to format this to […] would just need to be left to javascript.

> […] raises the question of what one should do with a

> non-english website. […] Interestingly, this doesn't leave the

> same flexibility […] we could try generating […] Also, I am

> wondering if there is a way to design it so that

> footnotes-at-the-bottom […] Maybe people can just do this with

> javascript […] some kind of --inline-footnotes tag that

> generates something like […]


I think all this just goes to show why Markdown really either
needs to be externally configurable in its output or needs to
stay away from offering features that aren’t directly reflected
in HTML.

In-page links already work [1](#fn1). Markdown is just missing
syntax for attaching `id` attributes.

Lately I’ve increasingly been thinking that it would be nice,
perfectly sufficient for footnotes, but also useful for many
other uses, to have a `{@attr=value}` syntax (or something similar)
which attaches the given attribute to its surrounding tag. So
this example attribute {@id=foo} would be ganked from where it is
and dattached to the tag for this paragraph: `<p id="foo">`;
whereas *this {@class=shout}* would attach to the emphasis tag:
`<em class="shout">`; but exact placement wouldn’t matter, so I
could just as well write *{@class=shout} this instead* with
identical result.

1. {@id=fn1} Everyone can therefore pick their favourite layout.
   [2 {@id=fnref2}](#fn2)
2. Backlinks can just be written explicitly. {@id=fn2}
   [&#8617;](#fnref2 "Back to footnote 2.")

It’s more noisy than integrated footnote handling, but it also
avoids dictating any particular markup rendering of footnotes (or
adding configurability) and allows a great many things besides
that aren’t currently possible with Markdown.


> Like blockquote citations. {@cite=http://example.com/bq/}


![{@width=200} Or image metadata.](bar.png) {@align=center}

The concept of “put it somewhere in the block and it will
propagate to the surrounding tag” feels very Markdownish to me,
if there is such a thing.

I realize there’s no reason not to have both dedicated footnote
syntax as well as an attribute feature; but it really seems that
whatever footnote rendering is chosen, it would only suit Daring
Fireball and not many others besides, so adding them doesn’t seem
like a particularly good investment of feature support cost.

Sidenote: I’m not wedded to the proposed syntax.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>