on the philosophical aspects of a specification

[david parsons]

In article <47CD5989.2020006 at idirect.ca>,
Seumas Mac Uilleachan  <markdown-discuss at six.pairlist.net> wrote:

>david parsons wrote:

>> In article <d5d.1e15ea7e.34fdd932 at aol.com>,

>>  <markdown-discuss at six.pairlist.net> wrote:



>>> however, implementers can reach agreement easily,

>>> by leaving users out in the cold, brushing them off

>>> with a "you will need to follow the spec" which seems

>>> -- if i understand markdown's cornerstone correctly --

>>> to be outside gruber's comfort range for his creation...



>>     If a user says "I want paragraphs to start with an explicit

>> paragraph symbol and all newlines to force a <br/>" , I *will* brush

>> them off with a "you will need to follow the spec" because that's not

>> how Markdown works.    I can't imagine any other way to actually write

>> the language.



>[...] What we care about is that the original intent of our written 

>source is maintained.



   I'm not surprised when

1986.  What a great season.

   generates a list item, because the existing spec tells me that

   ``[...]a _number-period-space_ sequence at the beginning of a line[...]''

   will trigger an ordered list.




   But what's the intent of ***hello*, sailor**   ?

   Should it produce 
    1. <strong><em>hello</em>, sailor</strong>
    2. <strong>*hello*, sailor</strong>
    3. *<strong>hello*, sailor</strong>
    4. ***hello<em>, sailor<strong>
    5. ***hello*, sailor**
    6. <em><strong>hello</strong></em><strong>, sailor</strong>
    7. <em><strong>hello</em>, sailor</strong> (which makes baby XML cry) ?

   How about **Hello, sailor ?

   Is it <strong>Hello, sailor, **Hello, sailor, or <em></em>Hello, sailor?

   And how about _________cut here_________ ?


   Formal specifications are written to avoid surprises in the
   implementations;    As a user (and there's no way I'd have written an
   implementation if I wasn't a user) of the language I'd like to avoid
   surprises when I go between the markdown documents on my website,
   posts on my weblog, or posts on someone else's wiki and/or weblog.