Hello,
I read David Wheeler's table proposal[1] for Markdown and very much
agree with his conclusion and PostgreSQL-inspired proposed format. I
also read the mailing list archives for 2009 but did not find any
clear concesus on whether DW's format was officially accepted (I hope
it is soon!).
However, I want to ask: has anyone considered taking these simple
ASCII table drawings to the next level of realism with Unicode box
drawing characters[2]? I have long admired the w3m browser[3]'s
ability to render HTML tables using Unicode box drawing characters.
For example, w3m renders this[4] demo page as follows[5]:
A more complex table-within-a table.
An inner table showing a variety of headings and data items.
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
? Inner Table ?
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
? ? Head1 ?
? CORNER ??????????????????????????????????????????????
? ? ? Head3 ?
????????????????????? Head2 ?????????????????
? Head4 ? Head5 ? ?Head6 ? ?
Outer ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Table ?A ? ? ? Lists can be table data ? Two Wide ?
? ? ? ? Images can be table data? ?
????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????
? ?Two ?A Form in a table: Your age:? ? ?
? ?Tall ? [ ] ? No ?Multiple?
?HTML ? ? What is your favorite ice ?border?line ?
?Station ? ? cream? ?Little?item ?
? ? ? [Chocolate ] ?Table ? ?
? ? ? [OK] [Cancel] ? ? ?
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
What if Markdown used Unicode characters to express tables in this manner?
All we need are two essential subsets of the Unicode box drawing characters:
* thin ones for normal cells: ? ? ? ? ? ?
* thick ones for heading cells: ? ? ? ? ? ?
Thanks for your consideration.
[1]: http://justatheory.com/computers/markup/markdown-table-rfc.html
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_drawing_characters
[3]: http://w3m.sourceforge.net/
[4]: http://www.december.com/html/demo/table.html
[5]: http://snk.tuxfamily.org/tmp/w3m-tables.png
On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 12:18 AM, Suraj Kurapati<sunaku at gmail.com> wrote:> Hello, > > I read David Wheeler's table proposal[1] for Markdown and very much > agree with his conclusion and PostgreSQL-inspired proposed format. ?I > also read the mailing list archives for 2009 but did not find any > clear concesus on whether DW's format was officially accepted (I hope > it is soon!).I didn't go back and check but I think there was in a previous discussion with a similar proposal. In other words, you need to go back further in the archive. Basically, these proposals for more complex tables are outside the scope of Markdown and should be left to raw html. At least I seem to recall actual implementers leaning that direction. Of course, if someone wanted to implement David's proposal (or some variant) and users flocked to it, then the rest of us may follow suite. Until then, I'm sticking to the simple solution we have now. Hint (and shameless plug): Python-Markdown makes adding on something of the sort easy with it's extension API. Check it out here: http://www.freewisdom.org/projects/python-markdown/Writing_Extensions> What if Markdown used Unicode characters to express tables in this manner? > > All we need are two essential subsets of the Unicode box drawing characters: > * thin ones for normal cells: ? ? ? ? ? ? > * thick ones for heading cells: ? ? ? ? ? ? >The last few times someone proposed a syntax that didn't use commonly found keys on the keyboard, the proposal met with a *lot* of resistance. I suspect most users wouldn't even know how to type these characters. Another barrier is that not all implementations support Unicode (I think - at least not fully). Therefore, some implementations may never adopt such a proposal. Third, it seems like it would be an awful lot of work to build such a table. A lot more than some of the existing proposals out there. -- ---- \X/ /-\ `/ |_ /-\ |\| Waylan Limberg
* Suraj Kurapati <sunaku at gmail.com> [2009-09-09 06:20]:> What if Markdown used Unicode characters to express tables > in this manner?Then I would still write my tables using HTML tags. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
In article <cfbcd2f00909082118i558a6ef7qa968885d2460cbfc at mail.gmail.com>, Suraj Kurapati <markdown-discuss at six.pairlist.net> wrote:> >However, I want to ask: has anyone considered taking these simple >ASCII table drawings to the next level of realism with Unicode box >drawing characters?I'm sure that somebody has, but where are you going to find a keyboard that has all of those unicode glyphs on it, or would you have to write a markdown preprocessor that takes a table made up of symbols found on a keyboard and convert it into the unicode characters? -david parsons
Thanks for considering my idea and replying accordingly, everyone. I agree that having Markdown users meticulously craft tables with Unicode box drawing characters[2] is impractical. However, I am still very fond of David Wheeler's proposal[1] for Markdown tables. Are there any existing implementations of [1] at present? If not, I will try to implement it as a preprocessor (as Waylan Limberg suggested) so that it can be used with any Markdown implementation: cat document.md | dw_md_tables | markdown > document.html Thanks for your consideration. [1]: http://justatheory.com/computers/markup/markdown-table-rfc.html [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_drawing_characters