From: Clark C . E. <cc...@cl...> - 2002-07-02 17:27:19
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On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 12:54:35PM -0400, Steve Howell wrote: | From: "Clark C . Evans" <cc...@cl...> | > On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 12:25:45PM -0400, Steve Howell wrote: | > | What's the convention for separting paragraphs in underlying data? | > | Do folks typically separate paragraphs with one line feed or two? | > | > In previous systems I've worked on, we used a single carriage | > return to separate each paragraph. We could have used two | > carriage returns... but I don't see the need. | | On a typewriter, you would hit two carriage returns between paragraphs to | create the text you see here. On paper, you would see two line feeds. On | your terminal, you would see two line feeds. You are mixing formatting with content. When you press ENTER in microsoft word, it spaces things out very nicely. Only one ENTER there. The ENTER signifies the end of the paragraph. | In your underlying representation, though, there would only be one paragraph | separating the paragraphs. But, then, in YAML, I'd have to supply three | carriage returns. THREE carriage returns! (Until I got my YAML-optimized | editor, I guess.) At least you have a *way* to express a double ENTER after each paragraph. If we went with your suggestion, then I'd not have a way to express a single ENTER. This, IMHO, is a show stopper for your suggestion. | Why don't we just be consistent? Let's assume most apps use two carriage | returns as the paragraph separator. Then, let's have YAML render the two | carriage returns as two carriage returns. A human typing YAML would then | also use two carriage returns to see the YAML. Then, when the YAML was read | by another human, they would know that the two carriage returns actually mean | two carriage returns. I don't think this will be two difficult for most | people two understand. If we wanted to be consistent, then we wouldn't even have "folded" style at all; as the literal block does just fine. The whole point of folded style is to allow for information to be encoded in a way that is readable in your standard 76 column limited terminal. My content that I want to display nice in folded land, has very long paragaphs separated by a single line. This is my use case and the whole reason why I pushed for folded to begin with. I've already conceded that carriage returns surrounding indented blocks should be signficant; which is IMHO, a great idea. However, trying to change the established inter-paragraph rules is a dead-on-arrival proposition. ;) Clark |