According the list-items rule (that sublists need to be indented to the column of the first non-whitespace character after the list marker), the following Markdown:
1. item
2. another item
1. sub-list item
2. sub-list another item
3. sub-list last item
3. last item
Represents a single non-nested list:
<ol>
<li><p>item</p></li>
<li><p>another item</p></li>
<li><p>sub-list item</p></li>
<li><p>sub-list another item</p></li>
<li><p>sub-list last item</p></li>
<li><p>last item</p></li>
</ol>
Which seems wrong, because using a 2-space indent is enough to have the list rendered correctly with marked, redcarpet (& therefore GitHub), the original Markdown implementation, and PHP Markdown (see comparison on Babelmark).
I haven’t gotten any stats yet on how popular 2 space indents are among people who write Markdown, but since there’s at least one styleguide recommending it, I think it’s more than an edge-case.
For people who are thinking about indentation in terms of the number of spaces before the list marker, it’s quite strange that you can use 2 spaces to nest a list within an unordered list, but need at least 3 spaces to nest within an ordered one. The absurdity of this rule is illustrated further when you have ordered lists in the 2-3 digit range:
99. list item 99
- sublist item
- sublist item 2
100. list item 100
- sublist item
- sublist item 2
The tutorial at http:// Markdown Tutorial - Nested Lists says:
To nest one list within another, indent each item in the sublist by four spaces.
…But that doesn’t work in the above example because once you get above 100 you need to switch to 5-space minimum indents (see comparison on Babelmark).
I’ve read the “motivation” section of the spec discussing this rule, but I’m unconvinced because cases like:
1. foo
indented code
…Are already handled perfectly by all parsers. And cases like:
10. foo
bar
…Probably should be read as a list item with a subparagraph.
This was moved from https:// nested ordered lists indented with 2 spaces are broken · Issue #399 · commonmark/commonmark-spec · GitHub and a few other discussions have covered the same topic:
- https:// github.com/npm/newww/issues/1228
- http:// Could also support two spaces for list indentation?
- http:// Indentation requirement of sub lists inside ordered list items
PS: The “changing the bullet or ordered list delimiter starts a new list” rule is an awful thing to put in the standard. No other parsers do that.
PPS: Discourse says “new users can only put 4 links in a post”, so you should go to GitHub to read this post without most of the links intentionally broken or removed.