Tables and font metrics

[Mark Lawrence]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 08:26:17PM -0500, Michel Fortin wrote:
>
> So, to summarize, if you want to write a "nice" Markdown table 
> (viewable in Markdown format by anyone) edit your text in the same font 
> you expect people to view it, or a font with very similar metrics.
> 
> If you use a proportional font and don't want to count characters 
> manually, use the pipe as the column separator.
> 
> If you want to be lazy or just don't want to change the spacing for 
> every cell in the table when one cell's content gets bigger than 
> expected, use the pipe column separator too.
> 

I would really like to be able to use tables in Markdown, and I find myself
in complete agreement with Michel's view, excerpted above. I do most of my
writing in a text editor using a monospace font and I like making my table
columns line up; but there can be little doubt that a great deal of
Markdown work is and will be done in textareas on web pages, where
proportional fonts are the default and column alignment is approximate at
best. The "pipes or alignment" proposal accommodates both types of text
entry and seems to me to be the most Markdown-like.

As for the use of tab characters between columns, Lou Quillio's comment:

> And it's tough to key a tab in a textarea.

brought me up short, as I realized that I had no idea how to enter tab in
Firefox textarea. Hitting the tab key alone moves to the next control;
shift-tab moves to the previous control; various combinations of control-
and alt-tab do nothing or get intercepted by the window manager. So I agree
that tabs should not be a table requirement.

-- 
You are an engineer.
                -- Eno & Schmidt, Oblique Strategies