Typesetting:_Indentationstjohn_piano
Indentation is commonly used to show the boundaries between an item and its sub-items.
Example:
\
\Viewpoint\
\stjohn_piano\
\2017-06-28\
\no\
\
"Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant."
~ Nwabudike Morgan
\
\
Starting from the left-hand side, there are two levels of indentation in this example.
There are some difficulties with managing indentation:
- Spaces vs tabs
- With many levels of indentation, it can be hard to keep track of how many indents to do in a particular section of the text.
- The introduction of spurious whitespace into the base text. In the example above, there are now four extra spaces between constant." and ~ Nwabudike. These spaces are only there to handle indentation. This has several consequences: The need to manage indentation when re-using a section of text in another article, the problem of search (the indented text is now a different text string), and the difficulty involved in getting browsers to accurately render indentation.
Edgecase has decided to primarily indent by using extra blank lines.
Example:
\
\Viewpoint\
\stjohn_piano\
\2017-06-28\
\no\
\
"Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant."
~ Nwabudike Morgan
\
\
The difference is hopefully clearer in a more complex example:
\
\Recipe_for_generating_entropy_bytes_using_dice\
\stjohn_piano\
\2018-11-13\
\no\
\
\
Parts
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- Description
- Assets
- Notes
- Recipe
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Description
\
This recipe describes a method of using dice to generate entropy bytes.
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Assets
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Description: A script that converts dice roll results into bytes.
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\asset_of_another_article\
\Using_a_transaction_to_validate_a_Bitcoin_address\
\edgecase\
\66\
\convert_dice_rolls_to_hex_bytes_2.py\
\convert_dice_rolls_to_hex_bytes_2.py\
\e29d31cfa9a6a7bdb3ddad31efa86168aaf62270ce09712728b20bf9613aaf0e\
\
\
\
Summary of the approach: Every time you wish to visually indicate that a new sub-item has started, use blank lines to separate it from its parent item. Try to balance the number of blank lines above and below the sub-item.