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

[Shane McCarron]

There is also a new W3C activity to more tightly standardize CSV (
http://www.w3.org/2013/csvw/wiki/Main_Page) that should have something
relatively soon.  However, I still wouldn't want to build it directly into
a Markdown processor.


On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 11:47 AM, Sean Leonard <dev+ietf at seantek.com> wrote:

> On 9/5/2014 6:38 AM, Michel Fortin wrote:
>
>> Le 5-sept.-2014 à 9:13, mofo syne <mofosyne at gmail.com> a écrit :
>>
>>  Btw csv is a pretty loose standard. So the above csv should work still
>>> for many csv parsers.
>>>
>> Which just add another problem. If people come to expect CSV to work for
>> Markdown tables, they'll copy-paste their CSV documents generated by their
>> spreadsheet application and expect it to work, which it won't because it
>> just supports a small subset of CSV that isn't what most application
>> generate. Then I'll get a deluge of bug reports about this or that getting
>> mangled and all those bugs be unfixable because CSV is a too loose standard
>> to parse it reliably. Better stay away from CSV.
>>
>
> I agree with this.
>
> There is an informal standard: RFC 4180, "Common Format and MIME Type for
> Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Files" <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180>.
> It is informal because Section 2 describes the way most people do it,
> rather than prescribing rigid adherence.
>
> If you want to go CSV -> Markdown, your best bet is to use a CSV -> HTML
> processor, and then insert the HTML into the Markdown. Unambiguous. Problem
> solved.
>
> Markdown tables should be as simple as possible...and should look like the
> desired HTML output, in plain text e-mail. For this purpose, the pipe
> format works all right.
>
> -Sean
>
>
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