Asterisk footnotes

[John Gruber]

Aaron Swartz <me at aaronsw.com> wrote on 10/29/05 at 9:38 AM:


> I hereby invoke Gruber's Law to say we've got a problem with asterisk

> footnotes and so on. I have occasionally seen people write:

> 

> > "Now is the time for all good men to light the wick of their candle with my own

> > without the aide of government sponsorship."

> >

> >  - Thomas Jefferson

> 

> and the attribution becomes a bullet point. But even more frequent is this:

> 

> > But most of all, samy is my hero*. As if you didn't know! Heh.

> > It's not like anybody's telling me to say this, you know. I really

> > think that.

> >

> > * samy may not actually be my hero.

> 

> and the asterisk footnote becomes a bullet point.

> 

> And since me and my friends have fallen prey to this, action must be taken!


But what's the action? I can see how both of these are legitimate
problems, but how can we identify them algorithmically?

We could suppress them by disallowing single-item lists -- make the
rule for lists require at least two items. But I worry that this
might be too much. I'm not sure I can ever recall writing a list
with a single item, but I can imagine cases where I'd want one.

It could be that we disallow single-item lists in the case where the
single item matches the pattern:

    [bullet] [space] [list item text]

So you could force a single-item list with:

    [bullet] [2-3 spaces or a tab] [list item text]

But I worry that would confuse the hell out of someone who is used
to writing lists like this, with a single space after the bullet:

    * this
    * that
    * the other

but then can't get this to work:

    * single item list

-J.G.