|
Posted by Peter J. Holzer on May 18, 2008, 12:30 pm
Please log in for more thread options > Peter J. Holzer wrote:
>>> "l) I'd prefer plain text markup of the sort used by GrutaTxt or
>>> ASCIIDOC but simplified. That way I could embed tables that work well
>>> in plain-text newsreaders but would also look pretty in any
>>> newsreader that supported that format." - RGB
>>>
>>> "That would be nice, but wouldn't you have the same battle on your hands
>>> that those pushing html currently do?" - szr
>> [...]
>>> This posting is written in a form compatible with Grutatxt. In theory a
>>> newreader could render it with the headings in various fonts and sizes,
>>> with the bullet lists shown with proper bullet characters and with the
>>> tables displayed in some more pleasing form..
>>
>> If it recognizes the page as Grutatxt. How would it do that?
>
> I don't know, maybe using a header 'Content-type = text/structured'?
That would probably cause a problem with many newsreaders: They don't
know what text/structured is (that's a very bad name, btw - far too
unspecific) and how it should be displayed. Some may display it as
text/plain, but others will complain or resort to external filters.
> Don't forget many (most?) newsreaders already recognise *asterisks*
> /obliques/ and _underscores_ without requiring any special indicators.
> Ditto for lines starting with ">".
Most newsreaders take great care to render these in a way which doesn't
change the content (i.e., they may render anything between the asterisks
in bold, but they don't remove the asterisks). This is because they
cannot know that these characters are intended as markup - especially in
programming language newsgroups "strange characters" often carry
meaning. Still, even though they are quite conservative, and there is
only a very limited number of markup elements, it does happen that they
render something in a misleading manner.
> Is there any *technical* reason they shouldn't look out for other
> markup too?
Every additional markup element which is used only by convention and not
according to some specified format increases the risk that the reader
won't see what the author intended.
I have nothing against grutatext, asciidoc, etc. if they are properly
labeled. But if newsreaders A treats text/plain as grutatext and
newsreader B treats it as asciidoc, then I fear that the result won't be
pretty.
> It's not like I have some well thought out proposal here, this is just
> thinking out aloud :-)
Ditto.
hp
| 
XML Sitemap