[ANN] vfmd

[Roopesh Chander]

It's impossible to get that correct unless you know what the user has set
his tab settings to (like :set tabstop in Vim; or Tab Size setting in
TextMate). There's no good default: both 8 and 4 are equally good
candidates, and other values are allowed too. So I chose to go around it.

The 99% scenario is that the user is either using tabs for tabs or spaces
for tabs in his editor/s and not mixing the two up. Mixing spaces and tabs
is not a good practice in any piece of writing, so I think it's okay to not
optimize for that scenario.

Hence, the vfmd syntax guide only says "[The list marker character] must be
followed by one or more spaces", and avoids mentioning tabs altogether.
(The original Markdown syntax guide says: "List markers must be followed by
one or more spaces or a tab.")

Again, for code blocks, the syntax guide says the indentation should be 4
spaces or 1 tab, which should do fine for anyone.

So to summarize:
  - It's not possible to solve this correctly without giving the tabstop
number as an input to the parser
  - We don't want to get the tabstop as input, therefore we need a way
around it
  - If the user is not mixing tabs and spaces, he should be fine
  - If the user is mixing tabs and spaces, but has read the syntax guide
and follows it, he should be fine
  - If the user hasn't read the syntax and is also mixing spaces and tabs,
sorry, I'm afraid I'm unable to help him

roop.




On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 8:06 PM, Michel Fortin <michel.fortin at michelf.ca>wrote:


> Le 27-sept.-2013 à 9:04, Roopesh Chander <roop at forwardbias.in> a écrit :

>

> > Because this is how the syntax is defined (which is not hard or

> unintuitive

> > to follow for a user), there's no need to worry about a TAB character

> being

> > interpreted as 1-4 spaces based on it's position. If the user inserted a

> > TAB immediately after the bullet character, he is expected to do that for

> > all the list items anyway.

> >

> >   *\tlist 1 item 1

> >   * list 1 item 2

> >

> > The above too shall be interpreted as two lists.

>

> Ok, but what about this:

>

>         *\tlist 1 item 1

>         *    list 1 item 2

>

> They will both look unaligned in your editor (unless you set your editor

> to 5 spaces per tab (who does this?)), but they'll be in same list because

> because you're interpreting spaces differently from the editor.

>

> And what about this:

>

>         *\titem 1 paragraph 1

>

>         \titem 1 paragraph 2

>

> Also, what happens within code blocks? (I haven't checked your algorithm

> for code blocks, but if you change tabs to four spaces you're going to get

> strange results for any code block with tabs in them not a the beginning of

> the line.)

>

> --

> Michel Fortin

> michel.fortin at michelf.ca

> http://michelf.ca

>

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