On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 11:41 AM, John MacFarlane <fiddlosopher-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>wrote:

> +++ John Gabriele [Aug 15 13 10:24 ]:
>
> >    As for spans, the only thing that bothers me about [this]{.foo} is
> that
> >    square brackets are "linky" in markdown. The reader and writer of the
> >    text associates square brackets with links.
>
> They are also used for images -- that's why they seem to me a natural
> choice for an inlines-container.  The brackets group the inlines;
> the rest of the construction tells you either that this is a link
> label or that this is an image alt text or that it's a span.
>

Hm. Seems to me that inlines are most commonly grouped (delimited) by a
character, for example: *italics*, `code`, ^superscript^, etc. That's why
pipes seemed to me possibly good for a generic inline/span marker.

But, yes, it seems difficult to do better than [your suggested
syntax]{.new-syntax}.

>    It would be really nice for consistency if we could use the same
> >    character for spans as for divs...
> >    So:
> >    If you were willing to make a small breaking change, I think it would
> >    be very symmetrical to use |this|{.foo} for spans, and
> >    | {.foo}
> >    | this for divs
> >    and then (the breaking change), change Pandoc to use some other
> >    character for line blocks, for example:
> >    ; line block
> >    ; now like
> >    ; this
>
> I'm against breaking existing documents.  And using `|` for spans will
> cause problems with pipe tables.
>
>
Ok. If that's the case, then I suggest using the semicolon for the div
side-marking character:

; {.TIP}
;
; # Don't use closed-source tools!
;
; You can't change them and you can't count on them
; being around in the future.

It's:

  * unobtrusive,
  * easy to type (on us keyboards anyway),
  * has no strong connotation otherwise (such as "\*" for italics, or ":"
for definitions), and
  * has a nice vertical line-like appearance (moreso than dot)

-- John

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