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

[Michel Fortin]

Le 5-sept.-2014 à 5:28, mofo syne <mofosyne at gmail.com> a écrit :

> |:- Year -|:- Make -|:- Model  -:|
> 1997, Ford, E350
> 1999, Chevy, "Venture ""Extended Edition"" "
> 1999, Chevy, "Venture ""Extended Edition"" "
> 1996, Jeep, Grand Cherokee

Doesn't make much sense to me. I mean, it doesn't look too bad until you get to the quoted text part and have to escape quotes using a CSV-style double-quote escape instead of the Markdown-style backslash. Also, quoting the whole value is required in CSV anytime you have a comma in one of your cell which isn't a rare occurrence.

I think PSV (pipe-separated-value) is better because you're much less likely to have pipes in your text. And also it's better to reuse our current escape mechanism in the unlikely event you have pipes in your cells. And that brings us back to what everyone is already using for tables in Markdown, which aren't harder to maintain if you don't care about making the text form pretty.

This is also a perfectly valid Markdown Extra table:

	Year|Make|Model
	----|----|-----
	1997|Ford|E350
	1999|Chevy|Venture "Extended Edition"
	1999|Chevy|Venture "Extended Edition"
	1996|Jeep|Grand Cherokee


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