Should not convert a line break (two spaces) to <br>

[rugk]

With markdown you can force a line break with 2 spaces at the end of the line. However your package deletes these while tidying up:

# test

This is a line break without spaces
new line - at the end of this line are 2 spaces  
this line should be broke up.

[rugk]

Just saw that it converts the line breaks to <br> which is of course stupid and not markdown.

[rugk]

Any news on this? Conversion to <br>is still annoying and senseless.

[notslang]

Sorry for not replying earlier. The reason why it converts trailing whitespace into a <br> is because trailing whitespace is difficult to notice in most editor configurations (including the Atom configuration used in that GIF). In order to see it, you need to have "invisibles" set to display and even then it causes issues with editorconfig settings that are set to strip trailing whitespace or other code normalization tools. For example, view the below Markdown sample and try to tell what it will render into:

# test

this first line may or may not have trailing whitespace  
which may or may not cause a break before this line

Maybe even screen-shot it, or print it out and try to tell what the author intended. Over all, using trailing whitespace to indicate document layout is just a really bad syntax feature.

I can see the issue; <br>s are also pretty ugly, but they are compiled into the same thing and at least they're explicit so they cannot be confused for a typing mistake like whitespace can. Also, actually needing a line break is pretty rare. Usually you'd separate bodies of text by dividing them into paragraphs so the text can reflow depending upon the size of the screen / paper. For that reason, I think that the ugliness is a good trade-off for explicitness in the places where it is needed.

The main use-case is text that is formatting-sensitive, but isn't code, like addresses or poems. I do agree that the following example isn't quite right.

221B Baker St<br>London, NW1 6XE<br>England

We should change the styleguide to make it look like this:

221B Baker St<br>
London, NW1 6XE<br>
England

[rugk]

Okay, your arguments make sense. However I find it much more ugly to have HTML code in MD files than having to look at second time at a line to see whether it wraps. Especially as I use markdown preview anyway this does not matter for me.
Additionally we have to consider that markdown is most often read and not written and if you write markdown like this:

Sentence finished.  
We continue on a new line...

You already see the line break, because after there must be a line break - otherwise it is not rendered. Only for the writer it makes a difference if he forgets the .
So you might say that you also want to add line breaks just to keep the line length short and so you do not use as it should be rendered in one line, however in this case you clearly see it out of the context (either from the content or the style) . E.g. here you clearly see that the text has one line break:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec a diam lectus.
Sed sit amet ipsum mauris. Maecenas congue ligula ac quam viverra nec
consectetur ante hendrerit. Donec et mollis dolor. Praesent et diam eget libero
egestas mattis sit amet vitae augue. Nam tincidunt congue enim, ut porta lorem
lacinia consectetur. Donec ut libero sed arcu vehicula ultricies a non tortor.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean ut gravida
lorem. Ut turpis felis, pulvinar a semper sed, adipiscing id dolor.  
Pellentesque auctor nisi id magna consequat sagittis. Curabitur dapibus enim sit
amet elit pharetra tincidunt feugiat nisl imperdiet. Ut convallis libero in urna
ultrices accumsan. Donec sed odio eros. Donec viverra mi quis quam pulvinar at
malesuada arcu rhoncus. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient
montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. In rutrum accumsan ultricies. Mauris vitae nisi
at sem facilisis semper ac in est.

Obviously in this large text you should use a new line anyway (to clearly show it as two paragraphs), but this is just for demonstrating purposes.

[jorng]

@slang800 While I don't mean to be rude, I really don't agree with adding HTML of any sort automatically with a tidying algorithm like this.

Markdown is meant to be expressive and readable in plain text, as well as being easily converted to HTML for even better formatting. The double space at the end of a line is invisible on purpose, because it is a hint to the md interpreter, not a visual cue that readers/writers need in plain text.

The only time it matters for seeing this in the plain text is if somebody did it accidentally, and doesn't actually want a
in the HTML after proofing the rendered text. It is pretty easy to find when there is an actual line break, and changing it to
Actually makes it more difficult (visually).

[rugk]

👍

[notslang]

However I find it much more ugly to have HTML code in MD files than having to look at second time at a line to see whether it wraps.

Except, in certain situations, you can't even check to see if there is trailing whitespace... Like when code is printed or displayed on a screen statically. That's what makes trailing whitespace such an awful syntactical element.

Especially as I use markdown preview anyway this does not matter for me.

I don't think that we should assume people are using Atom to read all files... I frequently need to edit files over SSH without a nice editor like Atom.

Additionally we have to consider that markdown is most often read and not written

Usually "more reads than writes" is an argument for not using shorthands and making code as explicit as possible. If we're optimizing for readability, then shouldn't we be trying to prevent all confusion, even if it makes the code a bit uglier?

if you write markdown like this:

Sentence finished.  
We continue on a new line...

You already see the line break, because after there must be a line break - otherwise it is not rendered.

That's only obvious if you're looking at the rendered text on a wide enough display. If you're just proofreading the markdown source (such as during code reviews) then that's very easy to miss.

Here you clearly see that the text has one line break:

[...]
lacinia consectetur. Donec ut libero sed arcu vehicula ultricies a non tortor.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean ut gravida
lorem. Ut turpis felis, pulvinar a semper sed, adipiscing id dolor.  
Pellentesque auctor nisi id magna consequat sagittis. Curabitur dapibus enim sit
amet elit pharetra tincidunt feugiat nisl imperdiet. Ut convallis libero in urna
[...]

"Clearly"?! It looks like "Pellentesque" just got wrapped to the next line because it's a long word.

Obviously in this large text you should use a new line anyway

I agree, and I think that the use of <br>s should be fairly rare because of this.

---

While I don't mean to be rude...

No worries - I'd much rather get "hurt feelings" than let a bad design decision go unnoticed. 😄

The double space at the end of a line is invisible on purpose, because it is a hint to the md interpreter, not a visual cue that readers/writers need in plain text.

Maybe I'm more concerned about formatting than the average user, or maybe I just run into badly-formatted documents more often than is normal... But, when I'm writing something, I try to layout my text very carefully. Each element is there for a reason and line-breaks are rarely needed. I think I've run into them on accident more often than they're used on purpose.

If we were talking about the kerning on text, or how words should be hyphenated, I'd consider it a "hint". However, line-breaks are much more important than that. A linebreak is there to interrupt the normal flow of text, without starting a new paragraph / idea. It brings the focus away from the organization of a work in terms of paragraphs and sentences and down to the arrangement of words on a line - a level of control that's usually reserved for poetry or song lyrics.

Actually makes it more difficult (visually).

How does that make it more difficult?

[jorng]

I think that it makes it more difficult due to the fact that a line break was intended, but instead, I end up with a single line ( with <br> somewhere in the middle ).

In fact, I would argue that newlines should not be altered when immediately followed by text (with or without the double space), again for plain text readability. Other people will likely look at md files in another text editor, and I may want to end my lines at 80 characters for easy reading.

[notslang]

I end up with a single line ( with <br> somewhere in the middle )

Oh, yes - I agree, and that's fixed in notslang/tidy-markdown#26 (it breaks the line after the <br> to make the it obvious where the line ends)

I would argue that newlines should not be altered when immediately followed by text

I actually don't keep any information about the original line-breaks. The document gets reformatted entirely to maintain consistency and give a single representation for any given text.

However, I have tried using an 80-character hard-wrap... Most people hated it (which I suppose should have been obvious from surveying the way that people tend to format their Markdown) and maintaining that hard-wrap without a nice editor to automatically reflow the text was a huge pain. Also, the diffs that it produced were horrendous; a single word being added to the beginning of a paragraph would result in 2-3 lines after it being changed.

[DamianPereira]

I think adding HTML in any form is a no-go. It breaks conversion to pdf or other formats with pandoc, as <br> newlines don't work in pdf files.

Apart from that, markdown is supposed to be readable in plain text, and having the absolute minimum markdown. Adding a <br> makes the code uglier and less easily readable.

An option to disable all html "hacks" would be enough though. Maybe those hacks are good when your only intent is rendering HTML, and you don't need to constantly read and interact with the markdown source without rendering it.

[rugk]

It breaks conversion to pdf or other formats with pandoc, as
newlines don't work in pdf files.

Really? Did not knew this.
This is a very good argument against this HTML snippet there...

[DamianPereira]

@Rubk Yes, here is an example of the outputs when tunning pandoc Test.md -t latex -o test.pdf

Testing  
multilines

Testing<br>multilines

Even if there's a new line after the <br> pandoc still does not render a new line, it needs the 2 spaces. Also, if your preferred output is <br> I think a lot of users would still appreciate an option to disable it. Yes, markdown is an inconsistent mess, but adding html takes out what makes the language good, it's simplicity and plain text cleanliness and readability.

[rugk]

Thanks for the visual representation @DamianPereira. I hope this is finally a convincing argument for @slang800.