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Poll: Should Comments Support Lists?
3 points by lucb1e on April 29, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
Most semi-popular threads now contain comments where people try to make lists the usual markdown way, and it turns into one long tangled mess because HN requires a blank line before anything is rendered as a new line.

Should the comment syntax support these lists? The vast majority seems to use - as item marker (although some also use asterisks, it already being used for italics would make things more complicated than necessary I think).

Please vote for all applicable entries, e.g. "should apply only to new comments" + "\n- should translate into <br>-". Note that the order is randomized so binary choices cannot be grouped.

This should apply only to comments posted after some date, to avoid breaking comments that relied on the old formatting
3 points
Hyphens at the beginning of a line, so \n-, should translate into <br>- such that it is rendered how the user typed it (very simple code change)
2 points
Any list parsing option would be a bad change / none of the proposed options are good (please specify in the comments)
1 point
This should apply to comments posted at any time
1 point
Hyphens at the beginning of a line, so \n-, should translate into <li>, and the whole list needs to be surrounded by <ul></ul> (looks slightly nicer and may work better for screen readers(?), but harder to code because you need to detect where a list starts)
1 point



    ● lists are already possible 
    ● if one doesn't mind monospace
    ▷ with a variety of bullets


Literally never seen anyone use unicode bullet points; monospace is harder to read and does not support links. I do not see this as a suitable option when abuse of the current syntax (that is, trying to use normal lists and it being broken after submitting) is so prevalent.




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