Markdown comments

[John Gruber]

Michel Fortin <michel.fortin at michelf.com> wrote on 9/18/06 at 6:26 PM:


> But consider these two comments:

> 

>      <!------ Header ------->

> 

>      <!-- this -- or that -->

> 

> Your proposal would change them to:

> 

>      <!--\-\-\-\- Header -\-\-\-\-\-->

> 

>      <!-- this -\- or that -->


My plain English rules were incomplete. I'm thinking the way it
would work is that the opening `<!--` and closing `-->` would be
treated separately; they're the "markers", the characters in
between are the comment.

However, XML forbids `--->` as a comment closer, so turning it
into `\--->` would still generate invalid XML output.

We need another rule that says that if a closing `-->` sequence is preceded by a `-`, there'll be a space inserted. So, 

    <!------ Header ------->

would turn into:

    <!--\-\-\-\- Header -\-\-\-\- -->




> Beside not being particularly nice to read, a funny thing is that the  

> first hyphen of the `-->` delimiter has to be "escaped", as you say  

> it, which just seems strange. I think the backslash in this case  

> should be called a separator, not an escape character.


The only other option is to allow people to create comments that
won't pass through an XML parser.



> I note that your backslash-"escape" method ensure that we are able to  

> reconstruct the comment in its original form. Any reason this would  

> be needed? If that's not needed then there is no need to escape  

> already existing backslashes.


I can't think of a good reason, but I hate to destroy data. I
figure just because I think think of a good reason now to make
this transformation reversible doesn't mean I, or some other
Markdown user, won't think of one eventually.



> I think however that it is important is to keep things readable, and  

> I'd prefer using something less distracting than a backslash as a  

> separator. Using the same technique as shown above, spaces could be  

> used as the separator instead of backslashes. Regexes like this:

[...]

> and it would still be possible to rebuild the original by removing  

> exactly one space between each pair of hyphen.


Only if we add an extra space if you already have a space between
dashes in the input, right? I'm not opposed to using spaces
instead of backslashes.



> About commented scripts. This practice may not be recommended, it is  

> still widely in use and I think we shouldn't break it. And since the  

> Markdown syntax should not be processed within `<script>` tags, it  

> should not "fix" comments there either, it's that simple.


Right, we shouldn't have to change anything for that.

I see HTML comments in script tags all the time when I view
source. I agree that it's wrong and bad practice for 2006, but
it's definitely common.

-J.G.