Any news re tables and Markdown?

[Michel Fortin]

Le 12 mars 2005, à 0:04, Jelks Cabaniss a écrit :

> 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>

I admit that many of these tables looks great, but most tables in these 
RFC's cannot be converted so simply. Here is an excerpt of one table in 
the second RFC:

>     
> +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
>     |  Quantifiers - Items to count the preceding regular expression   
> |
>     
> +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
>     |     ?      |  Match zero or one instances.                       
> |
>     |     *      |  Match zero or more instances.                      
> |
>     |     +      |  Match one or more instances.                       
> |
>     |   {n,m}    |  Match any number of instances between              
> |
>     |            |  n and m (inclusive).  {n} matches exactly n        
> |
>     |            |  instances.  {n,} matches n or more instances.      
> |
>     
> +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+

This table looks nice because there is not a separator line between 
each table row, just between the most important ones. The real meaning 
of this table is more like this:

     +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
     |  Quantifiers - Items to count the preceding regular expression   |
     +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
     |     ?      |  Match zero or one instances.                       |
     +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
     |     *      |  Match zero or more instances.                      |
     +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
     |     +      |  Match one or more instances.                       |
     +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
     |   {n,m}    |  Match any number of instances between              |
     |            |  n and m (inclusive).  {n} matches exactly n        |
     |            |  instances.  {n,} matches n or more instances.      |
     +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+

And there you can see the additional clutter. Maybe there is a way to 
parse the first version if we can make a line different when it just 
adds content to the previous row:

     +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
     |  Quantifiers - Items to count the preceding regular expression   |
     +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+
     |     ?      |  Match zero or one instances.                       |
     |     *      |  Match zero or more instances.                      |
     |     +      |  Match one or more instances.                       |
     |   {n,m}    |  Match any number of instances between              |
     :            :  n and m (inclusive).  {n} matches exactly n        :
     :            :  instances.  {n,} matches n or more instances.      :
     +------------+-----------------------------------------------------+

But this isn't so cute, and is hardly what people use today.


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/