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

[Seumas Mac Uilleachan]

Joseph Lorenzo Hall wrote:

> Sounds like there are quite a few people who write intuitively by

> placing a space or two before a list marker.  Next question: what if

> we only allowed a fixed number of whitespaces before a list marker?

> For example, what if the spec said 0-1 whitespace characters before a

> list marker?

>

> Is that too rigid?

>

> This would accommodate those of us that write with a space before a

> list marker, but wouldn't capture my edge case (with the "2008."

> indented three spaces on a newline). best, Joe

>

>   

What's needed is a way to distinguish your edge case from the general 
case where it would be a list. Do you use two white spaces to preserve 
the line breaks? Perhaps that could be the trigger in this case - a line 
ending in two white spaces prevents the next line from being formatted 
as a new list.

I just tested this edge case in PHP Markdown Extra and it does the same 
thing (both with and without the two white spaces for newlines).