Block quotes with a blank line between them get merged

[Michel Fortin]

Le 18 oct. 2006 à 17:37, John Gruber a écrit :


> Jacob Rus <jrus at hcs.harvard.edu> wrote on 10/18/06 at 12:13 PM:

>

>> Incidentally, I don't think that we need any more explicit

>> symbolic marker for code blocks.  One of the things I most

>> like about markdown's syntax is that a simple indentation puts

>> us into a code block, without any unnecessary clutter.

>

> It would be in addition to the current syntax, and should remain

> out of your way if you don't like it.


Me thinking about Markdown Extra: if you're using the colon for that  
as previously suggested, you're breaking the definition list syntax:

     Hello there!

     :   Is this some code or a definition?

So I will suggest something else.

It's not uncommon to see unindented code samples in email and  
elsewhere denoted by a simple separator line -- I've got an  
impressive number of bug reports for PHP Markdown formatted this way.  
So we could build on that and introduce an unindented code block  
syntax with a separator line. While the aesthetics are not as good as  
indented code blocks, that syntax could prove handy when indentation  
is not very practical (like, say, pasting a big code sample in a web  
form).

So I propose this as an alternative code block syntax:

     ~~~
     function db_like($first, $pattern) {
         $pattern = preg_quote($pattern);
         $pattern = preg_replace('/(?<!\\)_/', '.', $pattern);
         $pattern = preg_replace('/(?<!\\)%/', '.*?', $pattern);
         return preg_match('{^'.$pattern.'$}', $first);
     }
     ~~~

The code block begins with three or more consecutive tildes `~` alone  
on a line, and ends with the same number of tildes `~` alone on a line.


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/