Re: Formatting lists in descriptions

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Alex Kost <alezost@gmail.com> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès (2015-07-13 20:06 +0300) wrote:

[...]

>> Formatting will be lost in UIs, so this should be a comma-separated list
>> instead.
>
> Currently the formatting is not lost in Emacs UI, but I agree on this one.

The --show and --search options fill paragraphs, and now the Emacs UI
does as well.  :-)  Same for guix-web, where the browser automatically
fills things.

> What about separating such entries with newspaces as it is done in some
> other packages (e.g., 'signing-party') to prevent the format breaking?:

Yes, why not; it’s still not very pleasant to the eye but at least it
formatting will be preserved (except for guix-web, but we can fix it
later.)

> And as I have an unhealthy desire to organize the same things in the
> same manner, what variant to choose for formatting lists?  Should the
> list items begin with "-" or "+" or "*" or "•" and should there be spaces
> before the chosen symbol or maybe there should be just a couple of
> spaces without any marker?

I have a slight preference for • (which is the standard thing in
English, AIUI), preceded by two spaces.

The downside is that it won’t render properly on non-Unicode capable
terminals (and in a non-Unicode-capable locale, Guile will emit a
question mark instead), but I think that’s a price I don’t mind paying.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Ludo’.