Re: problems with returns and paragraphs

On Sat, Jun 28, 2003 at 08:26:30PM +0200, Bernhard Weichel in pmwiki-users 
wrote:
> PmWiki  treats two subsequent line feeds as a paragraph. But this is not the
> case when
> authoring a list. IMHO
> 
> * the list entry
> and the first entry
> * the second list entry
> and the second entry
> 
> should render as one list
> 
> * the list entry and
>   the first entry
> * the second list entry and
>   the second entry

Why would it not be...?

    * the list entry and the first entry
    * the second list entry and the second entry

Are you implying that PmWiki should also insert line breaks
(<br />) in the lines as well?

--------

Overall, it sounds to me as though you're saying that a line beginning 
with a '*' should start a list item that continues until the next line
that has some sort of beginning-of-line markup character.  While this 
is probably reasonable, I'm not aware of any other wikis that work this way.  
All of the wikis I've seen use the end-of-line to terminate a list item.
This isn't to say that PmWiki can't be different, but I'd want a
really strong reason for being different.

Plus, it's not completely obvious to me that if an author writes

    * one
    two
    three
    four

that they intended all of those lines to be part of the same list
item (whether displayed on a single line or with breaks between them).

However, instead of changing the meaning of the existing markup, which
could pose lots of issues for existing users, could we do a new or slightly
modified markup?  Just to grab the semicolon character at random, we
could possibly define ";*", ";#", ";!", etc. to mean that newlines 
should be converted to spaces (or <br>s) until the next line with
some sort of beginning of markup character.  Thus,

    ;* the list entry and
    the first entry
    ;* the second list entry and
    the second entry

would have the rendering you desire.  Again, I've just used semicolon for
illustration here, we could pick any reasonable character.  And I'm
not committed to supporting this--it's just an idea.

However, as always, I'll generally do whatever receives the strongest
support from users.  :-)

Pm