Tables in pure Markdown

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Hi,

I have a job need for tables and I am concerned that without them, this specification will have less support than it might (and make life harder for those that need tables where the spec is implemented).

As this is something relevant to my interests, I’ve started working on building up the ideas I have.

If enough people are interested, I’m willing to start work on the actual spec for the ideas below and submit them to the project.

Table Syntax Ideas

  1. Pipe delimited tables appear to be the most common implementation
  2. Support for colspan and rowspan are considered nice to have by many, but critical for those that need them
  3. Tables must be human readable
  4. Idea: Make the divider a double pipe to allow more command flexibility and enable formatting directives within the pipes
  5. The example should define the syntax
||            || Column Header One || Column Header Two || Column Header Three || if this line is followed by a line of ||--|| then it is a header, also, Row Headers are indicated by an optional *empty* A1 cell
||-----------:||:------------------||:-----------------:||--------------------:|| : to indicate default column alignment as per ME
||Row Hdr 1   ||Left Aligned||Centre Aligned||Right Aligned|| whitespace should not matter
||Row Hdr 2   |>|colspan the next cell                  ||Row 2, Col 3         || Merge the cells in Col1 and 2
||Row Hdr 3   |>>|colspan the next two cells                                   || Merge the cells in Col1, 2, and 3
||Row Hdr 4   |v|rowspan the next cell down||           || Column 3            || rowspan on col1 and an empty cell
||Row Hdr 5   ||                   || Column 2          || Column 3            ||
||Row Hdr 6   |vv|merge down 2     |>| Merge right                             ||
||Row Hdr 7   ||                   || Column 2         :||: Column 3           || Row7 Col2 RAlign, Col3 LAlign (in exception to column default)
||Row Hdr 8   ||                   || Column 2         :||: Column 3           ||
  • This should produce something like the following (Yes css folks would create this differently, I just wanted to give people an idea of what the rendered table should resemble):
    <table border="2" width="0">
    <tr>
        <th></th><th>Column Header One</th><th>Column Header Two</th><th>Column Header Three</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    	<td align="right">Row Hdr 1</td><td align="left">Left Aligned</td><td align="center">Centre Aligned</td><td align="right">Right Aligned</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    	<td align="right">Row Hdr 2</td><td colspan="2" align="left">colspan the next cell</td><td align="right">Row 2, Col 3</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    	<td align="right">Row Hdr 3</td><td colspan="3" align="left">colspan the next two cells</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    	<td align="right">Row Hdr 4</td><td rowspan="2" align="left">rowspan the next cell down</td><td align="center"></td><td align="right">Column 3</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    	<td align="right">Row Hdr 5</td><td align="center">Column 2</td><td align="right">Column 3</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    	<td align="right">Row Hdr 6</td><td rowspan="3" align="left">Merge Down 2</td><td colspan="2" align="center">Merge Right</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    	<td align="right">Row Hdr 7</td><td align="right">Column 2</td><td align="left">Column 3</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
    	<td align="right">Row Hdr 8</td><td align="right">Column 2</td><td align="left">Column 3</td>
    </tr>
    </table>
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