Markdown Discuss - Dec 2007 - Markdown is confused by quoted text inside a list inside a list

Howdy,

The following bug report was submitted to the Debian bug tracking
system.  I verified that the problem it describes is still present in
the latest beta.

If you reply to this message, please preserve the CC to
456595-forwarded at bugs.debian.org.

----- Forwarded message from Daniel Burrows <dburrows at debian.org> -----

From: Daniel Burrows <dburrows at debian.org>
Subject: Bug#456595: Markdown is confused by quoted text inside a list inside a
	list.
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit at bugs.debian.org>
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 12:42:12 -0800

Package: markdown
Version: 1.0.1-7
Severity: normal

  This example of quoted text inside a list works perfectly, as the
Markdown syntax documentation says it should:

-- snip here --
* Foo.

* Bar:

  > Some quoted text inside Bar.

  More of Bar.

* Baz.
-- snip here --

  Running markdown over this produces the expected HTML:

-- snip here --
<ul>
<li><p>Foo.</p></li>
<li><p>Bar:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Some quoted text inside Bar.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>More of Bar.</p></li>
<li><p>Baz.</p></li>
</ul>
-- snip here --


  However, if the <ul> is inside another <ul>, Markdown gets
horribly
confused:

-- snip here --
+ Item 1.

+ Item 2:

  * Foo.

  * Bar:

    > Some quoted text inside Bar.

    More of Bar.

  * Baz.
-- snip here --

  Markdown turns this into:

-- snip here --
<ul>
<li><p>Item 1.</p></li>
<li><p>Item 2:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Foo.</p></li>
<li><p>Bar:</p></li>
</ul>

<blockquote>
  <p>Some quoted text inside Bar.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>More of Bar.</p>

<ul>
<li>Baz.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
-- snip here --

  Note that the inner <ul> is closed before the blockquote and re-opened
at the next <li>.  I think this behavior is surprising; I would have
expected the blockquote and following text to be part of the <ul>.

  It appears that there's a workaround: adding extra indents to the
list item in question and the blockquote gives me what I would expect on
output:

-- snip here --
+ Item 1.

+ Item 2:

  * Foo.

  *   Bar:

      > Some quoted text inside Bar.

      More of Bar.

  * Baz.
-- snip here --

  compiles to:

-- snip here --
<ul>
<li><p>Item 1.</p></li>
<li><p>Item 2:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Foo.</p></li>
<li><p>Bar:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Some quoted text inside Bar.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>More of Bar.</p></li>
<li><p>Baz.</p></li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
-- snip here --

  Daniel

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.22-3-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL
set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages markdown depends on:
ii  perl                          5.8.8-12   Larry Wall's Practical
Extraction

markdown recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information



----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Matt

Le 2007-12-18 ? 1:07, Matt Kraai a ?crit :
> + Item 1.
>
> + Item 2:
>
>   * Foo.
>
>   * Bar:
>
>     > Some quoted text inside Bar.
>
>     More of Bar.
>
>   * Baz.
There are a lot of strange cases with list handling in Markdown.  
Markdown doesn't follow its own rule about the indent of nested list  
items... except when it does like for the blockquote here. The spec  
says that the content of a list item shall be indented by four  
spaces; the content of Item 2 isn't (nor is the content of Bar), but  
the content of Bar is. I'm not sure which should be considered a bug:  
the block quote not nested or Foo, Bar, and Baz not being part of the  
same list as Item 1 and 2.

I've been wondering what to do about this in PHP Markdown for a  
while, and decided not to move until Markdown.pl does in order to  
keep the two compatible. Given the amount of Markdown content  
everywhere, I'm concerned by how many documents such a change would  
(silently?) break.

I certainly hope it gets fixed, and thus I'm glad to see the issue  
raised again.


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/