Proposed table specification (long!)

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2011-05-10 à 23:54, Simon Bull a écrit :


> If the proposed syntax overly complicated, I am very happy to simplify it.

> The question is whether or not the following is really complicated?

> 

> ~~~~~

> 

> 

>    -----------------------------------

>         THE PEOPLE OF MIDDLE-EARTH

>    -----------------------------------

> 

>      People    Homeland    Tongue

>    ===================================

>      Elves     Rivendell,  Quenya,

>                Mirkwood,   Sindarin,

>                Lorien      Nandorin

> 

>      Dwarves   Erebor      Khuzdul

> 

>      Hobbits   The Shire,  Westron

>                Breeland

> 

> 

> ~~~~~


I agree with most of Fletcher's points. This is complicated. I made a parser that can parse something relatively similar to the above before settling on PHP Markdown Extra's current table syntax. I decided against it for a couple of reasons.

First, it relies on spacing too much. With most syntaxes in Markdown, you can be lazy and not indent everything perfectly. This table syntax relies entirely on perfect spacing, which goes contrary to this principle. It also only work with monospace fonts which can be a problem in some cases.

Second, editing its content is a real pain. Try to add a new elven tongue between "Quenya" and "Sindarin" and tell me how much time it takes. Now compare with editing the same table in HTML.

I'll concede that the table is more readable than in HTML, but I think the ratio between usefulness and implementation effort is rather weak.

And did I miss it or does it lacks one feature PHP Markdown Extra has: per-column left/right/center alignment?


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