On 2/1/08, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In that example, there are non-whitespace characters
between the two
colons, whereas in my example, it was just whitespace.
So I guess my question is, why should newline be special? That is,
why would these two examples render differently:
;Term: : Definition
;Term:
: Definition
It's hard for me to argue "why" because personally I think the
;term:definition syntax is pretty crappy. It's the sort of cutesy
minimalist syntax that was in vogue when wikis were first invented,
but no one would dream of it now. I (and perhaps many people) tend to
look at it like this:
;term
(translates into a DT wrapped in a DL)
:definition
(translates into a DD wrapped in a DL)
;term
:definition
(translates as above, except that they're wrapped in the same DL, much
like two consecutive #'s or *'s)
;term:definition
Now *this* is the special case, IMHO. Asking why the newline is
special is missing the point: newline is always special. Or rather:
*Newline
is
:always
special
So actually the newline is just behaving as it always does: breaking
the end of a list item. It's the colon which has the weird double
behaviour: acting as both a newline and list item in one. Personally,
I don't see much benefit from this.
In any case, getting back to the original question re: doubled colons.
I've looked through my corpus (versity, source, books, quotes) and
find extremely few instances of that:
; CVS Archive : :pserver:anoncvs@libre.adacore.com:/anoncvs/xmlada
; Covalent – directional: : Covalent bonds are between specific atoms
and distorting the positions of the atoms will break the bonds.
I think you're right that these are probably intended to trail on the
term line, but it doesn't look like a big issue.
Steve