Tables

[John Gruber]

Dr. Drang <drdrang at gmail.com> wrote on 12/3/05 at 10:53 AM:


> While I appreciate the explicitness of ----> and <---->, I can see why

> people find it visually jarring. The < and > are big and they don't

> blend in with the - or the |. How about -----~ and ~-----~ ?


I see it as a consistency problem that this proposal uses certain
punctuation characters at the end of the column header rules to
indicate alignment:

    <-------        means left align
    ------->        means right align

And don't forget:

    :-------        left align from Michel's original syntax proposal

Whereas:

    .-------        align based on '.' character in column content

In other words, if ".-------" means "align on the dot", then
shouldn't "<-----" mean "align on the left-angle-bracket"?

I'm partial to allowing for:

    :----       left align
    ----:       right align
    :---:       center align

and nothing else. [^1] This syntax is a bit mark-up-y, meaning that
it looks a bit like rule-based syntax, as opposed to the natural
"doesn't look like markup" style that Markdown generally aspires to,
but at least it's a little bit self-evident what's being indicated.

-J.G.


[^1]: Except for the way that Markdown should automatically
    determine when you want left or right alignment based on your
    using 0 or 1 spaces between the content and pipe separators of
    every item in a column.