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Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

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Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#11

Post by telemachos »

billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

I'm not sure of the origin of the convention, but using two newlines consistently to mark new paragraphs (rather than indentation or just one newline) seems awfully common to me in technical writing. So the Markdown rule has always made sense to me. Or to put it another way, it was immediately natural to do it that way.

Edit: to answer the question of the comment below this, poems need to be handled specially in Markdown as in HTML. It's an issue more generally, and I think that the standard solution is

for the poem as a whole and
(or depending on your markup flavor preference) for the lines. It's a known thing: http://blog.signified.com.au/a-poem-element-for-html5/

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#12

Post by lutorm »

billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

Yes, I have. When you hit alt-q in emacs, you do, too. It goes with the theme of "making it look like you write ascii files". Have you never tried to read an ascii file that's written without line breaks in an xterm?

When programming, do you never cut lines with enter except after the semicolon either?

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#14

Post by almost »

billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

Very much so. One of the cool things about markdown is it looks good in source form as well as after processing to HTML. In order to keep that looking good you of course keep your lines to under 80 characters. That makes sense in fixed width ASCII but no so much once it's gone to HTML.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#15

Post by ra88it »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #6

I don't understand why the term "fork" didn't appear in Atwood's article. It's the simplest solution to his problem.

I suspect the word "fork" was deliberately excluded from the article because it would be less provocative. Atwood appears to be more interested in starting controversy than actually solving problems.

[edit: Ok, so it does appear in the quote taken from a mailing list, but Atwood does not explicitly address the idea.]

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#16

Post by fr0sty »

billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

Alternatively:

"Oh no, I'm trying to paste this block of text from an email and it thinks every line is a new paragraph!"

Besides, Markdown was designed to be readable as plaintext and test written with the expectation that single return -> linebreak is not easily readable (unless people are in the habit of indenting the first line of their paragraphs.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#17

Post by [deleted] »

almost wrote: post #14
billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

Very much so. One of the cool things about markdown is it looks good in source form as well as after processing to HTML. In order to keep that looking good you of course keep your lines to under 80 characters. That makes sense in fixed width ASCII but no so much once it's gone to HTML.

[deleted]

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#18

Post by billpg »

andrewcooke wrote: post #7
billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

some people hit return when the text is nearing the end of the input box. as in this text, which has "return" after "end of".

(Edit: I think I was a bit rash in this message, stemming from my sense of sheer disbelief. While I stand by my overall point, I would like to apologize for my tone.)

Really? I can't recall the last time I saw a multi-line text box that didn't word-wrap.

That may have made sense back in the day when TEXTAREA form elements didn't wrap and there was no way to switch the wrapping on, but its been over 10 years since that was the case. Do people still do that?

Even in the presence of people needlessly hitting enter because they don't realise the input box will word-wrap, the effect of doing the-wrong-thing still seems preferable with turning enter key presses into line breaks.

The worst that happens when you hit enter at the end of the input box is a narrow column of text.

If you expect hitting Enter to result in a line-break, doing the-wrong-thing results in text being wrongly joined together into one paragraph.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#19

Post by nollidge »

telemachos wrote: post #11
billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

I'm not sure of the origin of the convention, but using two newlines consistently to mark new paragraphs (rather than indentation or just one newline) seems awfully common to me in technical writing. So the Markdown rule has always made sense to me. Or to put it another way, it was immediately natural to do it that way. Edit : to answer the question of the comment below this, poems need to be handled specially in Mar…

But what if you want a newline for a reason other than for paragraphs, like a poem or something?

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#20

Post by billpg »

fr0sty wrote: post #16
billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

Alternatively: "Oh no, I'm trying to paste this block of text from an email and it thinks every line is a new paragraph!" Besides, Markdown was designed to be readable as plaintext and test written with the expectation that single return -> linebreak is not easily readable (unless people are in the habit of indenting the first line of their paragraphs.

That still happens? Have I been watching Doctor Who too much and I've been transported back to the 90s?
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