Code

[simonmika]

Support inline and code blocks.

[simonmika]

How should we set which color coding to use?

[davidhesselbom]

In GitHub flavored markdown, code blocks are created using three backticks followed by the language's name. This works well, except backticks are inconvenient to type on my SE keyboard.

[simonmika]

I agree it feels somewhat hacky. I would rather use a sign easier to write.

[davidhesselbom]

In Atlassian products, you wrap code blocks in {code}. I never liked that way of doing it, and it's no better than HTML's <code>.

[simonmika]

I agree. What about using one of these symbols instead of `:

1. §
2. @
3. %
4. +
5. '

[davidhesselbom]

Well, %, + and ' are all commonly used in code, so you'd need to escape that symbol a lot, depending on what language you're using. I don't know about @, but it's used here on GitHub for tagging people.

I've never seen § used for anything other than legal documents, where § is often the first character on a line, which could cause problems. Like @, it's also kind of "big" ($code block$). I've also been unable to locate the § symbol on many screenshots of US keyboards (which is odd, and important).

[simonmika]

$ should be used for math like in TeX and LaTeX. Single $ surrounding inline math and $$ a block of math.

I kind of like the idea of doing the same with code but just using a different symbol.

[simonmika]

You are right, § is not available on US keyboards, to bad.

I suggest going for %. As far as I can recall it is mostly used for single line comments. As long as we surround inline code with single % and block code with %% it should very seldom be a problem. And when there is a problem one has to use escape characters.

[simonmika]

For configuring syntax highlighting I suggest two ways:

1. Set a default the default code language for document using code-language = c. It would then be valid from there on until the next assignment.
2. For blocks it could also be possible to postfix the opening like this: %% c.

[davidhesselbom]

How will you handle links with percent-encoded characters in them, e.g. https://github.com/cogneco/typeup/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=%25? Will % only start a code block if it is preceded by whitespace?

[simonmika]

For inline code we need to think about it. For code block it's not an issue as they are surrounded by %%.