Question

Hello,

I often write long list items and feel that the raw text looks really ugly with absolutely no blank lines allowed between successive items. I therefore made a very small change to lib/Render.pm to enable a single blank line to be not counted as a list terminator but two lines to be counted as a list terminator.

This patch is simply (its actually just four or five changed/new lines):

Fri Sep 30 21:48:18 PDT 2005  srinathava@gmail.com
  * two blank lines to terminate a list instead of one
diff -rN -u old-lib/TWiki/Render.pm new-lib/TWiki/Render.pm
--- old-lib/TWiki/Render.pm     2005-09-30 22:03:03.580648768 -0700
+++ new-lib/TWiki/Render.pm     2005-09-30 22:02:27.000000000 -0700
@@ -899,6 +899,7 @@
     $insideTABLE = 0;
     $insideNoAutoLink = 0;      # PTh 02 Feb 2001: Added Codev.DisableWikiWordLinks
     $isList = 0;
+       my $blankLines = 0;
     @listTypes = ();
     @listElements = ();

@@ -934,6 +935,7 @@
         m|</pre>|i && ( $insidePRE = 0 );
         m|<noautolink>|i   && ( $insideNoAutoLink = 1 );
         m|</noautolink>|i  && ( $insideNoAutoLink = 0 );
+               m|\S| && ( $blankLines = 0 );

         if( $insidePRE ) {
             # inside <PRE>
@@ -1016,7 +1018,7 @@
             }

 # Lists and paragraphs
-            s/^\s*$/<p \/>/o                 && ( $isList = 0 );
+            s/^\s*$/<p \/>/o                 && ( $blankLines = $blankLines + 1);
             m/^(\S+?)/o                      && ( $isList = 0 );
            # Definition list
             s/^(\t+)\$\s(([^:]+|:[^\s]+)+?):\s/<dt> $2 <\/dt><dd> /o && ( $result .= &emitList( "dl", "dd", length $1 ) );
@@ -1026,7 +1028,7 @@
            # Numbered list
             s/^(\t+)([1AaIi]\.|\d+\.?) ?/<li> /o && ( $result .= &emitList( "ol", "li", length $1, $2 ) );
            # Finish the list
-            if( ! $isList ) {
+            if( $blankLines >= 2 ) {
                 $result .= &emitList( "", "", 0 );
                 $isList = 0;
             }

This however introduces a very strange (and ugly) side-effect. Namely the "Edit", "Attach" and "Printable" links are now shown on three lines actually as a list rather than on a single line...

The toolbar code with the patch becomes:

<div class="twikiToolBar"><div>



<li> <a href="/%7Esrinath/twiki/bin/edit.cgi/Main/WebHome?t=1128143273"><b>Edit</b></a>
</li>
<li> <a href="/%7Esrinath/twiki/bin/attach.cgi/Main/WebHome">Attach</a>

</li>
<li> <a href="/%7Esrinath/twiki/bin/view.cgi/Main/WebHome?skin=print.pattern">Printable</a>
</li></div>

Without the patch, the toolbar code is

div class="twikiToolBar"><div>
<ul>
<li> <a href="/%7Esrinath/twiki/bin/edit.cgi/Main/WebHome?t=1128143649"><b>Edit</b></a>

</li>
<li> <a href="/%7Esrinath/twiki/bin/attach.cgi/Main/WebHome">Attach</a>
</li>
<li> <a href="/%7Esrinath/twiki/bin/view.cgi/Main/WebHome?skin=print.pattern">Printable</a>
</li>
</ul>
</div>

Could anyone please let me know of a good way to approach the fix?

PS: I know that this issue has been disussed multiple times at:

• UnexpectedNumberedListRestart
• BulletsScrewyWithGaps

and other places. But I would like for the raw text to remain readable and all the solutions so far seem to ask the user to put extra stuff in the raw text.

Environment

-- SrinathAvadhanula - 01 Oct 2005

Answer

If you answer a question - or someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is below the edit box.

This is better posted as a ChangeProposal in the Codev web.

-- PeterThoeny - 01 Nov 2005