On the <dl> (2021)

44 points by runxiyu

radio

It's sad that Markdown doesn't have description lists.

apropos

Pandoc flavoured Markdown supports description lists with at least two syntaxes.

Most implementations don't, though, true. The Typst typesetting system / markup language, on the other hand, gives first-class syntax to description lists as / term: description, which I think slots in really nicely with their - bulleted lists and + auto-numbered lists...
- fiatjaf
  
  https://github.com/typst/typst This looks good.
  
  Is Typst just an app or is it a standard that aims to be implemented in multiple places?
  - trenchant
    
    I don't think it aims to be implemented in multiple places, but the one implementation can already render to both an HTML page or a PDF, live in the browser, and its implementation supposedly makes new output formats easy to add. So I think the goal is to stay to the one implementation but be flexible enough to do whatever you'd want to accomplish with a separate implementation.
- runxiyu
  Some implementations (notably, iirc, Hugo, Pandoc, and GFM?) support
  
  dt : dd dt : dd
- fiatjaf
  
  https://www.djot.net/ supports description lists (and, most importantly, Djot is not a superset of HTML and can be used outside of a bloated HTML-capable browser).
- fly
  
  Markdown has everything HTML has. It is a superset of HTML.
  - whjms
    
    Markdown does not have convenient syntax for <dl> - this is the commonly-used connotation of "Markdown has X".
  - rebane2001
    
    Depends on where you use it. Here on Lobsters, for example, I can't use HTML in Markdown.
    
    I can
    
    make lists
    
    like this
    
    but I can't use the <dl> element.
- technomancy
  
  Gotta be one of my top five elements of all time.
  - whjms
    
    It's definitely up there with <details>. I wish we had more interactive elements.
- adam_d_ruppe
  
  You can have multiple <dt>s per entry too. You can use this for things like synonyms in a dictionary list. When styling them in css you probably want to familiarize yourself with the adjacent sibling selector.
  
  see: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/dt