List Markup Alternatives

Suggestion: Give a brief overview plus the pros and cons and link to a more comprehensive external specification (if any).

Hyphen list proposal #

HyphenListMarkupProposal

Whitespace, single dash, single plus #

• Current standard: having to escape the (quite common) "bold at the beginning of a line" is bad.
  • So: Should my proposal prove inadequate (or unpopular ;-) I'm very much in favor of this proposal. Still: Strange escaping rules should be avoided at all costs.
• Repeating the bullet character (vs. whitespace): I am not sure that we are not making common things (at most 2 indentation levels in lists) harder while making uncommon things (more than 2 nesting levels) easier.

I'm in favor of the following syntax (hear me out, I'll consider anti-whitespace arguments)

- one (ul)
  - one.one
  - one.two
- two (ul)
  + two.one (ol)

Advantages:

• Near WYSIWYG: Conforms to common plain text practices, looks a lot like the rendered output.
• Uniformity: ordered and unordered lists have similar "bullets".
• Compared to multiple dashes / no whitespace:
  • No clash with hr
  • No clash with signatures
• Compared to the current standard:
  • No clash with bold at the beginning of a line (which is not uncommon).
• Works quite well in Python and Haskell. This point is only partly humorous, as wiki markup is a semi-formal language and does have some rigid rules, so the same kind of usability rules apply here as they do to programming languages.

Potential disadvantages:

• User has to count spaces: I would count relative indentation (not the absolute amount of spaces), then this is only a problem if one wants to continue a second-level list (see below). But: users look for visual feedback after entering wiki text, anyway, and will be very obviously alerted to the problem then.

- first level
  - second level (counting is not a problem: we just have MORE spaces than the line above)
    - third level 1
    - third level 2 (counting is not a problem: it is the same as the line above)
  - second level continued (here we have to count...)

• Confusing tabs and spaces: disallow tabs.
• Clash with negative numbers: make space after hyphen mandatory. This is how humans disambiguate here, too:

-333
- An item (the above does not look like an item)

-- AxelRauschmayer, 2007-02-28

Repeated asterisk with "smart" disambiguation #

A list is marked with a single asterisk * or hash # on the beginning of a line, followed with any other character and optionally preceded with any number of spaces or tabs. Subsequent list items are marked with any combination of asterisks and hashes on the beginning of a line, optionally preceded by any number of spaces or tabs. The last character of the combination denotes the kind of list: asterisk means bullet lists while hash means numbered list. The length of the combination defines the nesting level of particular list item -- the more characters, the more nested the list is. If the combination is too long for the number of lists already introduced, the maximum possible nesting level is assumed. The list ends as soon as there is a line that doesn't start with a combination of asterisks and hyphens.

Note: This is the markup used in Creole 0.5 and before.

Example #

Some text that is not a part of the list.
 *The first bullet list item,
* The second bullet list item,
##The first numbered sublist item,
**The second item of the numbered sublist,
 **** A first item of bullet subsublist
  *** Second item of the subsublist
# Third item of the list
#* A bullet sublist
This is not a part of the list anymore.

Advantages #

• Uses the character that is most popular for lists in existing wiki engines
• Accepts arbitrary nesting and spacing, leaving to the users the decision about how to best format the list for readability
• At least the basic, first-level list will work in MixedMode in most wiki engines
• There is no such thing as "error" or "bad input" -- every input is rendered in some way

Disadvantages #

• There are several cases when there is ambiguity between the list markup and the markup for bold text
• The research on WikiPedia indicates that in over 50% of cases users will not format the list for readability if only the rendering is correct
• The markup is context-dependent -- user can't tell if it's bold text or list by just looking at a single line