Re: [O] [html] non-lists showing up as lists

[Alan L Tyree]

Carsten Dominik writes:

> Hi everyone.
>
> As far as I can see, the filling code is already pretty smart about this 
> issue.   The question is then:  What else can we do about it.
>
After doing some analysis of my problems last night, I agree that
filling is not the issue. All of the instances that I have found in my
own files are the result of pasting in from another file (case law plain
text database or a web page).

> Possibilities:
> 1. We could change the parser to ignore lists where the first
>    item does not start with `1.' or `a)'.  But this would
>    be a pretty serious change.
>
> 2. We could implement a good function that could find problematic
>    cases, so that they can be fixed by hand.  This is basically
>    what Nick proposed - only it would be implemented in Lisp.
>
> 3. We could implement a function that finds and fixes such issues.
>    It would basically scan the buffer and find lists that have
>    only a single item, not starting with 1, and change the wrapping
>    to fix it.
>
> In any case, some hand work would be involved.
> I think we cannot fix this problem in full generality.  The reason
> is simply that Org is a plain text format and has to be heuristic about
> parsing.  There will always be edge cases like this.

I agree with this, Carsten.  As to the choices, it seems to me that the
only real choices here are between 2 or 3.

I can't imagine ever needing a list with a single item, but there might
be a single list item in a partially completed manuscript, so I guess an
"automatic" fix should offer the user the option to leave each instance
alone.

For my purposes, either 2 or 3 would be more than satisfactory.

Cheers,
Alan
>
> Anyone volunteering to write a command that will
> check the buffer and warn about it?  Maybe it could be
> implemented as org-find-next-funny-list-start, so that
> it could be used to search through the whole buffer.
>
> - Carsten
>
>
> On 3 jun. 2013, at 07:45, Alan L Tyree <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> On 03/06/13 15:40, Samuel Wales wrote:
>>> I don't recall whether I said I had a filling problem.
>>> 
>>> Filling is a red herring for my use case.
>>> 
>>> My point is that regardless of filling, it would be a good idea to be
>>> stricter about what a list is, for the reasons I listed.  In my use
>>> case.
>>> 
>>> Samuel
>>> 
>> You're right - you said "filling and yanking" in your first post.
>> 
>> As I said to Nick, I don't know if my problems stem from filling or not. 
>> Just know there are problems and I will track them down when I have a little 
>> time.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Alan
>> 
>> -- 
>> Alan L Tyree                    http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
>> Tel:  04 2748 6206           sip:address@hidden
>> 
>> 


-- 
Alan L Tyree           http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
Tel:  04 2748 6206     sip:address@hidden