Plugin Request: Fancy Lists

Operations Center
1

I realize this might be a bit out of the blue, but I’ve put together a Discourse plugin to support fancy lists and if possible, I think it would be cool to install it here.

It’s just a thin wrapper around this markdown-it plugin (markdown-it is the Markdown parser used by Discourse). There’s a bit of bundling/compatibility workarounds explained in the README, but it works out to just a few lines of code — I’m happy to explain in more detail if there are concerns about maintainability, etc.

Use Cases

It always bugged me a little that lists in our laws aren’t properly parsed. Here’s an example of the generated HTML with this plugin installed:

Markdown source 
# Markdown Act
*An act to test Markdown formatting*

# 1. Markdown

1. Markdown is a markup language for creating formatted text with a plain-text reader.

#. Discourse markdown syntax can be extended with plugins, such as to support lettered lists:
   a. List item 1
      i) Sub-item 1
      #) Sub-item 2
      #) Sub-item 3
   #. List item 2
   #. List item 3
Generated HTML

Markdown Act

An act to test Markdown formatting

1. Markdown

  1. Markdown is a markup language for creating formatted text with a plain-text reader.

  2. Discourse markdown syntax can be extended with plugins, such as to support lettered lists:

    1. List item 1
      1. Sub-item 1
      2. Sub-item 2
      3. Sub-item 3
    2. List item 2
    3. List item 3
HTML output without plugin

Markdown Act

An act to test Markdown formatting

1. Markdown

  1. Markdown is a markup language for creating formatted text with a plain-text reader.

  2. Discourse markdown syntax can be extended with plugins, such as to support lettered lists:

    1. List item 1
      1. Sub-item 1
      2. Sub-item 2
      3. Sub-item 3
    2. List item 2
    3. List item 3

It’s also just useful if anybody wants to have lettered lists, roman numeral lists, or lists that don’t start at 1 (or a, or i).

For more detailed information on supported syntax, you can check out the supported syntax for the markdown-it plugin that this is based on.

Compatibility

I’ve tested this plugin on a local instance of Discourse (used to generate the example above). It seems to work fine in the generated HTML and in the client-side preview. I haven’t installed all plugins/theme components we have here, so I don’t know if any conflict, but I don’t think they should?

Alternatives

Of course I found it only after putting my own plugin together (I mean, even Googling the name verbatim doesn’t turn it up…), but apparently someone else has done the same thing before.

https://github.com/Savarte1/discourse-fancy-lists

I haven’t tested it (and I think ol[start=*] would need to be added to the allow list to support lists not starting at 1?) but it’s based on the same markdown-it plugin, released under the MIT license as well, etc.

2 Likes
Heliseum Cabinet Nominations
2

This looks good, I’ll see about adding it later today.

2 Likes
3

This is now installed

Markdown Act

An act to test Markdown formatting

1. Markdown

  1. Markdown is a markup language for creating formatted text with a plain-text reader.

  2. Discourse markdown syntax can be extended with plugins, such as to support lettered lists:

    1. List item 1
      1. Sub-item 1
      2. Sub-item 2
      3. Sub-item 3
    2. List item 2
    3. List item 3
1 Like
4

Thanks! Looks sweet… if I may say so myself… :stuck_out_tongue: