Request: Allow soft line break in bullet lists and tables

[Mat]

I hope to make a github request about this but want to properly understand what is possible to do about it before requesting anything - so please come with input:

WikiText tables and bullet lists play central roles in TW but we don't have a good way to insert line breaks inside bullet/cell content. We must reside to a less pretty <br> which is not even wikitext and - more problematically - one still has to continue the line afterward making for a hard to read text in edit mode.

And, of course, typing a line like

this, totally breaks the bullet/table.... which is interesting because such a soft line break in regular plain text is totally disregarded when parsed! Inconsistent behaviou, IMO.

So, I'm wondering if anything could be done about this? One idea would be a special wikitext character to replace <br>. However, I would prefer that soft line breaks were simply allowed. I mean, soft line breaks do affect the output in bullets/tables (i.e it breaks them)... so could it instead be made to do the right thing?

Thank you

<:-)

[Eric Shulman]

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 3:11:46 AM UTC-8, Mat wrote:

I hope to make a github request about this but want to properly understand what is possible to do about it before requesting anything - so please come with input:

WikiText tables and bullet lists play central roles in TW but we don't have a good way to insert line breaks inside bullet/cell content. We must reside to a less pretty <br> which is not even wikitext and - more problematically - one still has to continue the line afterward making for a hard to read text in edit mode.

see https://tiddlywiki.com/#Lists%20in%20WikiText

Scroll down to see the last bit, "Paragraphs in Lists", which suggests either (A) using transclusion or (B) wrapping the extra lines within a <div>...</div>

(A) requires the content to be put into a separate tiddler, and

(B) uses newlines, but creates paragraph breaks in the output

However... there is another method, not mentioned in the documentation:

Try this:

# item one

# first line@@white-space:pre;

second line

third line

@@

# item three

# item four

# item five

yes... it's still a little bit awkward... but it doesn't rely on using <br> or transclusions, and doesn't produce unwanted paragraph breaks either.

enjoy,

-e

 

[PMario]

Hi,

This works too and uses: https://tiddlywiki.com/#Hard%20Linebreaks%20in%20WikiText

* List One
*"""
List Two
asdf
asdf
"""
* List Three

-m

[PMario]

hmmm,

Those examples should probably be added to the docs.

-m

[Mohammad]

Absolutely! most of features are not well documented!

[TonyM]

Perhaps a section on line breaks bringing together a set of methods. This was the thing that turned me off the most going from twc to tw5

Tony

[Mat]

Thanks for input guys.

...but, we're talking about making a "new line".  It's on par with being able to, say, "type capital letters" or erasing text. i.e it shouldn't even be an issue for the user! I'm wondering if it is just overly difficult to implement a solution that would allow users to simply, well, split the line and think no more of it? Or possibly to introduce a special line breaking character. Is there something fundamentally problematic?

For example in Google Docs, when making a bullet list, they differentiate between pressing the Enter key and Shift+Enter. The former creates a new bullet. The latter makes a softer line break and doesn't start a new bullet but instead lets you continue the bullet above but on a new line. When you want to exit the list, you press Enter twice. IMO this is the perfect UX.

In TW, one way (probably not backward compatible), might be to demand an empty row to indicate that the bullet list or table has actually ended. (We do demand empty preceding rows for e.g tables or bullet lists.) Any row break that is not preceded by an empty row is simply treated just like non-bullet/non-tables, i.e the text row is merged with the previous text row. This would harmonize with regular TW behaviour for typing text. 

So, this way one can, in edit view, create visual like breaks inside bullets and inside table cells making complex lists and tables much easier to edit. It would be ideal if it was wysiwyg and this would also create multi-lines showing in view mode.

Maybe the parser would requre a more explicit character than a line break for this type of soft break. Perhaps, inside bullets and tables, a row ending with >> or \\, and followed by a new line, could mean a soft row break? Would it be possible to implement this or is there something fundamentally problematic with this?

Thoughts?

<:-)

[PMario]

On Tuesday, December 17, 2019 at 11:20:05 AM UTC+1, Mat wrote:

Thanks for input guys.

...but, we're talking about making a "new line".  It's on par with being able to, say, "type capital letters" or erasing text. i.e it shouldn't even be an issue for the user! I'm wondering if it is just overly difficult to implement a solution that would allow users to simply, well, split the line and think no more of it? Or possibly to introduce a special line breaking character. Is there something fundamentally problematic?

---------- start of rant

Yes it is fundamentally problematic. Open Word and type [Enter] .. What you insert is a [new paragraph] break

If you type [shift-Enter] you actually get a line-break within a paragraph.

Most users don't realize it, because they use a fundamentally broken default template and they user 2 x [Enter] to create text that looks like a paragraph. In reality they create a broken structure.

So imo it's not a new problem. It's just that we tell our users that there is a difference. ... So they blame us for their ignorance.

-------- end of rant

have fun!

mario