Any news re tables and Markdown?

[Jelks Cabaniss]

John Gruber wrote:
> I'm struggling with where to draw the line, because it's obvious to
> me that very simple tables should be possible in Markdown. I mean,
> it's easy to write a "table" in plain text, but the problem is where
> to draw the line that defines "simple tables".

Interestingly, [reStructuredText][] also has what it calls "Simple Tables",
as distiguished from what it calls "Grid Tables".  Both are commonly used in
emails, newsgroups, and the various RFCs.  But I'm not so sure that Grid
Tables (which, btw, is the *sole* table format in GrutaText) could be called
more *complex* than Simple Tables.    

When we discussed this earlier on this list, several people said they didn't
like the "looks" of GTs.  Yet I feel sure reStructuredText and GrutaText
chose the GT precisely because it is *already* the defacto standard/meme for
drawing ASCII tables.  Just scroll through some of the RFC's like:

* <http://tinyurl.com/44t9d>
* <http://tinyurl.com/5tavg>
* <http://tinyurl.com/5rgpz>


Here's one that uses Simple Tables:

* <http://tinyurl.com/6cozv>

 
> For example, what about alignment? 

I think that's *somewhat* of an edge case (though less so than widths, cell
padding/spacing, etc.).  And it would probably not be practical in Simple
Tables.  In Grid Tables, you could change the top right '+' to something
else -- for the entire column, or for the particular cell.  To use your
(snipped) example, something like this:

    +-------+----------R
    |  SKU  |   Price  |
    +=======+==========+
    |  a1   |  $1,050  |
    +-------+-----------
    |  b1   |     399  |
    +-------+-----------
    |  b2   |      99  |
    +-------+-----------

(Alignment and such could always appear in a later Markdown rev.)

Bottom line: why invent Yet Another ASCII Table Syntax, when the Grid Table
is already the defacto one with the least ambiguity that actually *looks*
like a table?  (Textile, granted, is even less ambiguous, but you'd be
hard-pressed to find that kind of stuff in a normal email!:)  

(I'm not, BTW, arguing against Simple Tables -- it would be ideal if, like
reStructuredText, Markdown supported both.)


[reStructuredText]: http://tinyurl.com/5s7mk#tables


/Jelks