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If your editor supports editorconfig[1], you could set it to not strip newlines for .md files. :) [1] http://editorconfig.org/ http://editorconfig.org/

kentonv 11y ago
But I want to strip newlines from .md files.
- Animats 11y ago
  That's why significant end of line whitespace is a terrible design feature. You can't see it. It might get deleted accidentally. There were some systems back in the DOS/early UNIX era which had significant EOL whitespace. Spaces at the end of a line are still significant following a "\" in shell files. Some early word processors under DOS had significant whitespace at EOL, but tended to display something like a paragraph mark when it mattered. Python had tab/space trouble at beginnings of lines, but the compiler was finally fixed so that it emits an error if tabs and spaces are mixed in a way which makes indentation visually ambiguous. That was a neat solution to the problem. Leading tabs in makefiles were a mistake. The author of "make" once wrote that he put that in, and then, the next day, realized it was a bad idea. But he already had a user base of three users and didn't want to change it and break their code. I thought this idea was dead and buried. Sometimes, they come back.
  - BHSPitMonkey 11y ago
    For what it's worth, GitHub Flavored Markdown changes this to be more TeXy: any newline in text renders as a <br>, and you add an extra blank line to denote a paragraph break.
    - kentonv 11y ago
      Unfortunately that means that you absolutely need to enable word wrap in your editor, people cat-ing your readme on the shell will see ugly mid-word wraps, etc. Not the end of the world or anything, but somewhat inconvenient.
      - Pxtl 11y ago
        That sounds like a failure of cat more than a failure of markdown. There isn't a command-line argument for cat to break long-lines at the last whitespace of the line instead of mid-word?
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - Pxtl 11y ago
    MD could have been fine if it were the beginning of the line. "Any indentation without a blank line above is BR" It would make multiple repeated BRs difficult, though, but you probably shouldn't be doing that anyways.
- kentonv 11y ago
  Err, I of course meant "strip trailing whitespace", not "strip newlines", but apparently everyone understood.

kentonv 11y ago

But I want to strip newlines from .md files.

Animats 11y ago
That's why significant end of line whitespace is a terrible design feature. You can't see it. It might get deleted accidentally. There were some systems back in the DOS/early UNIX era which had significant EOL whitespace. Spaces at the end of a line are still significant following a "\" in shell files. Some early word processors under DOS had significant whitespace at EOL, but tended to display something like a paragraph mark when it mattered. Python had tab/space trouble at beginnings of lines, but the compiler was finally fixed so that it emits an error if tabs and spaces are mixed in a way which makes indentation visually ambiguous. That was a neat solution to the problem. Leading tabs in makefiles were a mistake. The author of "make" once wrote that he put that in, and then, the next day, realized it was a bad idea. But he already had a user base of three users and didn't want to change it and break their code. I thought this idea was dead and buried. Sometimes, they come back.
- BHSPitMonkey 11y ago
  For what it's worth, GitHub Flavored Markdown changes this to be more TeXy: any newline in text renders as a <br>, and you add an extra blank line to denote a paragraph break.
  - kentonv 11y ago
    Unfortunately that means that you absolutely need to enable word wrap in your editor, people cat-ing your readme on the shell will see ugly mid-word wraps, etc. Not the end of the world or anything, but somewhat inconvenient.
    - Pxtl 11y ago
      That sounds like a failure of cat more than a failure of markdown. There isn't a command-line argument for cat to break long-lines at the last whitespace of the line instead of mid-word?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- Pxtl 11y ago
  MD could have been fine if it were the beginning of the line. "Any indentation without a blank line above is BR" It would make multiple repeated BRs difficult, though, but you probably shouldn't be doing that anyways.
kentonv 11y ago
Err, I of course meant "strip trailing whitespace", not "strip newlines", but apparently everyone understood.