Div block syntax

[illionas]

@uvtc

I suspect few would type those closing double colons

Just like with trailing hashes ## for headers. It’s optional and may beautify it. But those who think that the document might be read in plaintext might want the box to stand out as a box.

@uvtc

users guessing as to which is correct.

all three are.

I think the partial examples also have a nice aspect. The “left and top only” looks like a floating box with some shaddow to me.

@uvtc

★ Side-marking with double colons (or any double any characters) don’t nest very well — that is, it’s a lot to type. This may be especially relevant for divs, where they’re often nested quite a bit.

The complexity of nesting also depends on whether we allow “lazyness”. Imo lazy blockquotes look very strange when nested, but well, that’s the trade-off for easy authoring.

Single colons would indeed make typing a little easier if we treat the colon exactly like the > in blockquotes.

That would indeed be a compelling argument for your :--- suggestion, especially if we were to introduce similar fenced syntax for blockquotes (and maybe also codeblocks) list this:

:--- BOX
fenced
:---

>--- QUOTE
fenced
>---

`--- CODE
fenced
`---

|--- CSV-TABLE ?!
fenced csv data
|--- 

@uvtc

★ If using colons with delimited syntax — along with nesting — you’re going to end up with multiple closing block delimiters that look like a wall of dots:

I don’t see how this is more beautiful:

:-------------------------- 
:--------------------------
:--------------------------
:--------------------------

But you could use the minimum number of colons needed (e.g. three maybe), or (optionally) use different lengthes to match different nesting levels visually:

:::::::::::: outer box
::::::::: nested 1
:::::: nested 2
::: nested 3
content
:::
::::::
:::::::::
::::::::::::

@uvtc

★ It breaks markdown tradition, in that

(A) it’s ok in md to use different characters for side-marking and delimiting (code blocks: spaces for side-marking, tildes or backticks for delimiting), and

(B) md historically uses only a single character for side-marking (ex. blockquotes).

(A), yes but this is not out of tradition, but out of necessity.

• The tabbed codeblocks only exist because it’s easier to type (as most editors allow easy indenting. Original Markdown has no fenced blocks at all.
• The blockquotes are copy-pasteable from e-mails etc. Nobody thought about fenced blockquotes then, because again, there were no fenced blocks back then.
• tildes for code-blocks suck anyway. And i think we should go down the logical path of using tripple backticks (or the suggested general block format with ```—``)

(B) true. But why care. Hitting a character twice is not that hard compared to hitting the space bar hundreds of times for indent if the tab key doesn’t work properly in your editor. Also, i think the tradition of markdown is visual sexyness and overview in plaintext more than easy to type (as compared to other lightweight markups).