spaces and newlines before list markers (was: evolving the spec)

[Yuri Takhteyev]

>  So -- any reasons why we should need to "tighten the spec"? Or can we

>  simply document it formally, with a grammar, test suite and so on to

>  make sure that the expected behaviour is always known, and ideally is

>  consistent with "email convention"?


I don't think we should generally try to tighten the spec for the sake
of tightening it.  Where possible, we should just document what we
decided the behaviour should be for all the edge cases.  If we agree
that examples like Joe's ought to be turned into numbered lists, then
so be it.

However, we should also consider that those might be "bugs" in the
current spec, in the sense that simple, email-like writing gets turned
into markup in cases where the users would not want or expect it.  I
think there are a few cases where Markdown is a bit trigger-happy.
Numbered lists are one such things.  My suggestion would be to
actually restrict the range of what is turned into ordered lists,
either by requiring that ordered lists start with "1.", or that they
have at least two items with consecutive numbers, or even to require
both.  I frankly don't see a point in allowing the user to number
their list items starting with an arbitrary number if those the list
will start with "1." when displayed to the viewer anyway.  But again,
the idea is not to tighten the spec, but to find a solution for a
"bug" that Joe described.

- yuri

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