[Discussion] Why isn't there a horizontal rule?

[Jonathan McHugh]

Hi Omar,

I recognised the use of the form feed ^L (ASCII 12) from Emacs. I was wondering about that too.

I checked the perspective from Xah Lee, who has evaluated its applicability:
=> http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/modernization_formfeed.html

He highlights technical limitations of form feed's reliance on ^L:
```
# Cygwin Bash
Cygwin Bash will generate this error if your shell script contains the Form Feed char that's not in comment.

bash: $'\f': command not found

# AutoHotkey
AutoHotkey scripting language generates compiler error if you have a uncommented Form Feed char in source code.

# PHP
PHP would print a warning about it: “Warning: Unexpected character in the input: '^L' (ASCII=12)”. This is in PHP bug database
```

His suggestion is an abbrev is to modernise the technique and encourage interprability
> So, a workaround i came up is to use the Unicode SECTION SIGN §, followed by the Unicode BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT HORIZONTAL (U+2500) ─.
``` elisp
("ss" "§ ────────── ────────── ────────── ────────── ──────────")

```
This approach could satisfy my desire for columns, given that the number of box drawings could be interpreted by a (friendly and amenable) client to split content into required columns
=> https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/2021/007205.html

Incidentally, should a browser ever consider navigating sections Xah Lee cites the use of `[` and `]` characters but proposes `PageUp` and  `PageDown`.


====================
Jonathan McHugh
indieterminacy at libre.brussels

September 23, 2021 10:43 AM, "Omar Polo" <op at omarpolo.com> wrote:

> Draco Metallium(Rodrigo S. Cañibano) <draco.kun at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> Hi!
>> 
>> I was going to send a long and passionate defence for the inclusion of
>> the horizontal rule (or "The Thematic Break" according to mozilla web
>> docs) when a line started with three hyphens. But on the last
>> paragraph I just realize I had to check the mailing list archive
>> before, and it turns out it had been already proposed, and not only
>> that, but I can't find a counter argument:
>> 
>> => https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/2020/000375.html
>> 
>> I'm wondering now: why wasn't it accepted? Was it just forgotten?
>> 
>> Thanks for your time!
>> ---
>> Draco Metallium
> 
> I can agree that having a horizontal rule would be nice. On the
> geminispace there are pages that uses either
> 
> ----
> 
> or
> 
> ```
> ---
> ```
> 
> which I personally dislike.
> 
> Some time ago I experimented with this a little. The
> proposal/break-page branch of telescope has some code which renders ^L
> (form feed, used to separate "pages") with a nice separator. (I went
> with ^L to avoid false positive with lines starting with `---' or
> similar)
> 
> But then I left that branch rotting. I guess that part of the reason
> something like this wasn't included before is because of the saying
> "perfection is when you can't remove anything" (or something similar,
> but the gist is that.) Horizontal rule can be avoided by properly using
> paragraphs and headings in most cases.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Omar Polo