Re: [BUG] Markdown export of description list with nested list [9.5.2 (release_9.5.2-25-gaf6f12 @ /usr/local/share/emacs/28.1/lisp/org/)]

[Tim Cross]

"Rohit Patnaik" <quanticle@quanticle.net> writes:

> As I understand it, the bug is in `org-md-item'. It formats the tag portion 
> of the
> description with **%s**, and then simply concatenates the content. This is 
> fine
> when the content is a simple string, but when the content includes line breaks
> (i.e. when content is itself a list), it doesn't realize that it needs to
> include a line break between the tag and the content.
>
> ox-html handles this case correctly because ox-html distinguishes between 
> plain
> list types, using <li> for ordered and unordered lists and <dt> & <dd> for
> description lists.
>
> I think this issue can be fixed by prefixing `contents' with a newline if 
> `tag'
> is present and `contents' itself contains multiple lines. However, this feels
> like a hack, and I'd be open to better approaches.
>
> -- Rohit

I think the real issue here is that the particular version of markdown
used by org-mode (see http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) does
not include support for description lists - it simply isn't part of the
supported syntax.

I"m not convinced adding support is a good idea as I suspect it will
create other complications and only reveal other syntax limitations - it
will be like pulling on a thread and could result in just unravelling
everything. As it says in the version of markdown syntax used -

 | For any markup that is not covered by Markdown’s syntax, you simply use
 | HTML itself. There’s no need to preface it or delimit it to indicate
 | that you’re switching from Markdown to HTML; you just use the tags.