numbered list bug in markdown.pl?

[A. Pagaltzis]

* Michel Fortin <michel.fortin at michelf.com> [2006-07-13 03:50]:

> For  example would yeild two sublists:

> 

>     1. List item

>      10. Sublist item

>     20. List item

>      2. Sublist item


That is hard to parse even visually for a human. I think
requiring more indentation won’t make Markdown unduly harder to
write but it will definitely make documents more readable.


> But how is the second sublist item different from the first

> 1-10-20-2  example of this post:

> 

>      1. List item

>     10. List item

>     20. List item

>      2. List item


There is no previous item with a smaller indent.

But there is no way to avoid creating a nested list for the last
item in this example, and to me, the vertical alignment would
clearly indicates that the author did not intend that to happen.


> Personally, I'd go the route of requiring an increasing

> character count for numeric markers when they are right-aligned

> because I think it is the less damaging thing to do to current

> Markdown text and because it makes sense visually.


Seems like the wrong fix to me. I have a bunch of documents which
rely on the fact that I can number my lists any way I like. After
all, it has always been a deliberate feature. To break something
that you explicitly allowed previously seem, well, not like the
smartest move.

But I don’t have documents any that rely on tiny indentation to
mark up nested lists. There is nothing in the docs that specifies
the behaviour of this case in detail. In fact I was surprised by
the actual behaviour.

So I would argue that there is room to tweak the indentation
rules, but none to tweak the numbering requirements. I would
instead suggest that to start a nested list, the marker be
required to be indented at least three spaces more than the
preceeding item.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>