On simplifying table syntax in any future markdown extension. (Use CSV)

[Alex Chamberlain]

Would you use CSV in a plain text email (to represent a table)?

On 5 September 2014 13:24, Waylan Limberg <waylan.limberg at icloud.com> wrote:
>
>
>> On Sep 5, 2014, at 5:28 AM, mofo syne <mofosyne at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The second issue, is that people find it hard to have to deal with
>> formatting the pipes. If alignment of cell data is of no concern to
>> the user, then we should use CSV data as the inspiration.
>
> I've long been (openly) of the opinion that tables are not prose, and therefore do not belong in markdown - except to fall back to raw HTML (see the philosophy section of the syntax rules). On the other hand, I recognize that sometimes a simple, unstyled table of simple tabular data has it's place and having to revert to raw HTML is a little much. So, CSV -- I like it. Plain, raw cvs gets converted to a table. That is something I might be able to get behind.
>
> Not sure I like your headers though. Why can't they be comma separated as well? Perhaps one character (at the beginning of the first line) could identify that line as a header. Without that character, then you get no header. Yes, that means you loose any ability to style, but I'm okay with that -- use raw HTML if you want more control.
>
> Waylan Limberg
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