Any news re tables and Markdown?

[Jelks Cabaniss]

Michel Fortin wrote:

>  Table    Column                  Single-                      |
>  syntax   separator  Font choice  column   Comment             |
> ========  =========  ===========  =======  =======             |
>    A      Pipe       Any font     Yes      Somewhat cluttered  |
>           (`|`)                            but always work.    |
> --------  ---------  -----------  -------  ------------------  |
>    B      Character  Monospace    Yes      Currently my        |
>           count                            favorite.           |
> --------  ---------  -----------  -------  ------------------  |
>    C      Character  Monospace    Yes      Lazier than B and   |
>           count                            less pretty.        |
> --------  ---------  -----------  -------  ------------------  |
>    D      Character  Monospace    No       No single-column    |
>           count                            table and may be a  |
>                                            little confusing    |
>                                            with header syntax. |

+1.  Very well thought out, really.
 
> Isn't this more readable? 

It's great -- in a monospace font! :)  I copied the above table into MS Word
-- recognizing that it came a plain text source, the initial paste ended up
by default in a monospaced font (Courier New in this case).  I changed it to
various other proportional fonts, all with equally horrid results.

Now I understand why people who have their mail readers (and text editors)
set to a proportional font always react viscerally to these proposals.  :)

>  From the first code sample of this email:
> 
>      |  Right  |  Left  |  Center  |  Default  |
>      |-------  |  ------|----------|  -------  |
> 
> Noticed how I made possible text alignment in a
> proportional-font-compatible way? 

Yes.  (But I can't imagine writing that using a proportional font -- it just
doesn't end up looking like a table, the columns aren't aligned, etc.)

> Instead of counting dashes and
> comparing with header, it checks for the presence of one or more
> spaces between the header's dashes and the pipes. 

Hmm.  I wonder if you could optionally use '+' signs in place of pipes on
the "grid".  I very much like your proposal, but still thinking about all
those ASCII tables "out there"...

/Jelks