A problem with backtick code fences

Spec
12

If that intent is inline code — semantically a single line — that was too long for one line, it’s rather weird to put the closing ``` on separate line. Like most people wouldn’t write:

**Emphasis
importantly empathic
**

This is what I would instinctively write:

``` hello
is this NOT inline code?
doesn't look to me to be a code block!```

and as long as I don’t leave a space before the closing backtick, even a hard-wrapping editor won’t accidentally put it at start of line.

This parses as inline code in most implementations, including Markdown.pl (because it had no concept of fenced blocks):
http://johnmacfarlane.net/babelmark2/?normalize=1&text=```+hello is+this+NOT+inline+code%3F doesn't+look+to+me+to+be+a+code+block!``` more+text

  • marked parses it as code block that ends at the trailing ```. That’s as gracefully degrading as I could ask.
  • unfortunately other implementations parsing as code block don’t recognize it as the end of the block, so following lines become part of the “runaway” code block: commonmark, cheapskate, Parsedown, cebe/markdown, markdown-it.
    This makes this style of writing very unportable :frowning: .
    That doesn’t necessarily preclude CommonMark from specifying that’s how this case should be parsed but it does suggest there should be another way to support it.

The CommonMark spec to me reads ambigous: it’s worded in a way that seems to assume a code fence must occur at start of line (perhaps indented) but doesn’t say it explicitly. And there are no examples with ``` following text.

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