Spec proposal

[Ali Fardan]

On 2020-10-23 21:48, colecmac at protonmail.com wrote:
>> - In 5.5.2 it is stated that lines beginning with "* " are elements of
>> an unordered list, and I assumed the space after '*' is required since
>> it is included in the double quotes, when I asked for clarification on 
>> IRC,
>> others suggested I handle '*' with or without space afterwards, so I
>> did.
> 
> I would disagree with this. Originally there was no space required in 
> the
> spec, but this was changed, because some people may start lines with
> asterisks as an "ASCII-art" way to show emphasis. To allow this writing
> style to continue, you should require the space after the asterisk. 
> This is
> what the spec defines.

I'm with you on that, also, mandatory whitespace makes it look cleaner
anyway, however, I'll keep handling both cases until the spec updates
to a clarified version.

>> - In 5.5.3, I had the same question with quotes, the spec says ">" 
>> which
>> sounds like there should be no space after ">", and if there is a 
>> space,
>> I should treat it like a part of the quote, I asked on IRC if I should
>> follow that behaviour but others also recommended that I should handle
>> spaces after ">" just in case, which leaves me to think again if the
>> spec intended that or not.
> 
> Initially no line markers required a space after them. The list line 
> marker
> now does, as I described above, but the quote line marker was not 
> changed,
> as there doesn't seem to be a reason to. There doesn't seem to be 
> writing
> styles that start lines with a '>', but aren't referring to a quote. 
> Working
> without the space also follows markdown, which is a plus.

Again, I'll keep handling both cases for this too, until the spec
clears out.