Re: Tildas or backticks for fenced code blocks

["John Gabriele" <jgabriele-97jfqw80gc6171pxa8y+qA@public.gmane.org>]

I use the tildes because I think they look better. They're vertically in the middle of the glyph.

Backticks are too high up, and so at the top of the fenced block look like they're floating too high up, and at the bottom are cuddled up too tight. They also make it harder to see where leading or trailing blank lines are.

-- John

On Wed, Jun 29, 2022, at 5:44 PM, John MacFarlane wrote:
> That is right.  I discussed the idea on the old markdown-discuss
> listserv with other markdown implementers at the time, and we
> agreed on tildes.
>
> I believe that at least pandoc and PHP markdown implemented this
> syntax.
>
> Then GitHub came out with their own fenced code block syntax
> using backticks (without discussing this or even perhaps being
> aware of the tilde syntax).  This isn't ideal, really, because it
> introduces a syntactic ambiguity between inline code and code
> blocks, but it has a certain naturalness, and doesn't require
> pressing the shift key.  At any rate, it caught on, so pandoc
> allowed this form too.  I think the tilde form is rarely used
> any more.
>
> Albert Krewinkel <albert+pandoc-9EawChwDxG8hFhg+JK9F0w@public.gmane.org> writes:
>
>> name name <ivan20151013-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> writes:
>>
>>> I'm new to Pandoc. From what I have read in the manual, it seems the
>>> preferred way to create fenced code blocks is to use tildas, not
>>> backticks:
>>>
>>>    ~~~
>>>    fenced code block
>>>    ~~~
>>>
>>> What is the exact reason for this?
>>
>> I believe that fenced code blocks where first introduced in pandoc with
>> syntax using tildes; other tools then followed suit, but used the
>> now-popular backticks syntax. At least I seem to remember reading
>> something along these lines, but I might be completely wrong.
>>
>> -- 
>> Albert Krewinkel
>> GPG: 8eed e3e2 e8c5 6f18 81fe  e836 388d c0b2 1f63 1124
>>
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