A Modest Definition List Proposal

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2009-02-19 à 1:52, Yuri Takhteyev a écrit :


> Correct. Or one could say there is no way to get any standard blessed

> as official here period. The closest you can get is to convince Michel

> to add it to Markdown Extra, in which case there is a reasonable

> chance that some of the other implementations will add optional

> support for it. In this particular case, I find it hard to see this

> proposal going very far, though. (Of course, Michel can prove me

> wrong.)


It seems I've been called into this discussion. :-)

Well, that whole thread left me wondering. I'm of opinion that using a  
tilde is as good as a colon, perhaps even better visually. It has the  
advantage of looking better when you add a colon at the end of your  
term (which, I think, happen often enough):

	Term:
	   : Definition

	Term:
	   ~ Definition

The current syntax using a colon has been there... since PHP Markdown  
Extra's debuts (July 2005). There is obviously a lot of documents out  
there using it, so there's not way I'll just change it to something  
else.

As for accepting the tilde as an alternate marker, there's obviously a  
precedent of that: unordered lists which can be made of `*`, `+`, or `- 
`, so it wouldn't be counter-nature to add one for definition lists.  
On the other hand, that precedent was meant to allow other syntaxes in  
common use to work with Markdown; I'm not sure any syntax we can come  
with for definition lists is already in common use. Definition lists  
are already some sort of specialized niche syntax within Markdown and  
HTML: useful when you need one, but not something a lot of people care  
for or even know it exists.

So in the end I'm pretty much ambivalent to this proposal: I like it  
but I don't think it's worth wasting another marker character and  
dealing with possible clashes (legitimate text with a tilde in it).

That said, perhaps I'll change my mind the next time I have to write a  
definition list.


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