Lists As An Alternative To Tables

October 2024

I'm thinking about ordered lists and using them for a kinda of table or at least multi-column display.

The idea is that you'd do something like

-- columns

1. This is row 1 col 1

2. This is row 1 col 2

1. This is row 2 col 1

2. This is row 2 col 2

etc...

Basically, you'd just use the numbers to identify the column and then break the rows whenever the numbers start over.

Other Thoughts

You could could leave some numbers black and those would just output as empty?
You could come up with a dynamic section tag (e.g. -- col-1, -- col-2 etc. what would allow for you to add section attributes to each one as well.
Need to think about the ramifications of that. Would probably want to make it a specifc marker like using a tilde to identify the dynamic part. e.g. -- col~1, -- col~2. This way you could make it dynamic for anything and just use it as a piece of metadata for anything.
Of course, it probably makes the most sense to use a pipe so the method matches passing attributes.
In fact, you could just make them attributes. Like it's a different way to add the metadata.
And then for the multi column you'd just look at the first flag and use it as the split row key

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