Revised 2005 proposal for meta-data

[Sam Angove]

On 12/29/06, Andrea Censi <andrea at censi.org> wrote:

>

> I wait for comments.



Are you wedded to the curly brackets?

The way I see it, Markdown already has a span-level metadata syntax:

    This is [a link](http://example.com "Title").

In Python it might be this function:

    def link(link_text, href, title=None):
        element="a"

        # blah blah

But it could just as easily be this one:

    def meta(text, href=None, title=None, **kwargs):
        if not "element" in kwargs:
            if href:
                element="a"
            else:
                element="span"

        # blah blah

And exist in text like so:

    This is [a link](http://example.com xml:lang="en").

    [Not a *link*...](class="not-a-link" element="blink")

Like the curly-bracket proposal, something similar was also [discussed
in 2005][1], though only in relation to reference-style links and
images.

[1]: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2005-October/001578.html

I think it's more elegant, but that's obviously a personal preference.

 * * *

The footnote syntax isn't official, but it's pretty popular:

    Blah blah blah [^note_id] blah.

    [^note_id]: Note text.

That's just arbitrary metadata applied to a specific point inside a
block. It's a natural syntax to extend to other types of metadata,
indicated by their own "magic" characters:

    > Blockquote hooray! [@cite="http://example.com/" class="ext"]

    ## Heading [.classname]

The rules regarding placement etc. could be essentially the same as
they are in the curly-bracket syntax.

I prefer it because square brackets already indicate editorial content
(i.e. a form of metadata) in plain text.

Anyway, YMMV, $0.02, etc. Happy new year!