Today I want to talk about lists. Not for shopping, not the programming data type, but the display of items in both unordered and ordered fashion.

Specifically this:

Item A

Item B First Numbered Inner Item Second Numbered Inner Item

Item C

In other words, lists of bullets and numbers. This article explores some of the different tools used by the programming world to render display lists, specifically HTML, reStructuredText, Markdown, and LaTeX.

If you view the HTML source of this web page, you'll find this:

< ul class = " simple " > < li > Item A </ li > < li > Item B < ol class = " arabic " > < li > First Numbered Inner Item </ li > < li > Second Numbered Inner Item </ li > </ ol > </ li > < li > Item C </ li > </ ul >

Or more clearly:

< ul class = " simple " > < li > Item A </ li > < li > Item B < ol class = " arabic " > < li > First Numbered Inner Item </ li > < li > Second Numbered Inner Item </ li > </ ol > </ li > < li > Item C </ li > </ ul >

This works, but is incredibly verbose. HTML requires closing tags on every element (keep in mind browsers are not the same as specifications). Working with lists in HTML becomes tedious quickly. Which is why so many people use WYSIWYG tools or mark up languages like reStructuredText and Markdown, as it expedites creation of lists (and many other things).

This blog is written in reStructuredText and transformed into HTML. Let's see the markup for this blog post:

* Item A * Item B #. First Numbered Inner Item #. Second Numbered Inner Item * Item C

Notice the extra lines between bullets and numbers? A behavior of reStructuredText is that you have to put those in nested lists in order to make things display correctly. Also, 2 spaces indentation generates a different result than 4 spaces, the former creating sub-bullets, the latter creating an indented block quote with bullets. They are there to remove ambiguity.

Interestingly enough, I did not know this until the day after I wrote this article. Since understanding these behaviors can be challenging, myself and Eric Holscher of ReadTheDocs fame began a project last year to clearly index and document all the details of reStructuredText from the user's point of view. Our plan was to provide this as an adjunct to the formal documentation of reStructuredText. Alas, time and work considerations got in the way. If you want to help expand our effort, you can contribute at https://github.com/pydanny/restructuredtext .

One thing to note about reStructuredText is that it's pretty much Python only. Outside the Python world if you are writing plaintext markup then odds are you are using Markdown.

Markdown does lists really well. Terse and no weird quirks:

* Item A * Item B 1. First Numbered Inner Item 1. Second Numbered Inner Item * Item C

Another nice feature about Markdown is that it's in use everywhere. GitHub, Stack Overflow, my favorite tablet writing app, and a lot more.

# Markdown vs. reStructuredText

Why don't I switch from reStructuredText to Markdown? Here are my reasons against switching:

Force of habit. PyPI requires it to display package long descriptions nicely on Package pages. Sphinx is based on it. reStructuredText has one concrete standard, with extensions that people add. Markdown has many standards, which may or may not have shared features. I can use Pandoc to help transform reStructuredText to Markdown.

Finally, let's discuss LaTeX . While not a markup language it bears mentioning, and I'll explain why later in this section.

Up to about 8-10 years ago LaTeX was used in a lot of technical writing, including the Python core documentation. That ended with the rise of mark up languages, relegating LaTeX to the world of academics, mathematicians and computer scientists - anywhere complex equations need to be specified.

LaTeX belongs in this article because it is so commonly used with markup. In fact, as far as I can tell, in order to render reStructuredText and Markdown content into the PDF format, the most common approach is:

Use a script to transform the markup into LaTeX. Use a tool like XeTeX to render the LaTeX into PDF.

Why the extra step? Why not just go directly from markup to PDF? Well, the content in reStructuredText and Markdown have to be formatted in order for them to be displayed, or they will just look like plaintext markup. When they are converted to HTML, the browser does the formatting for us. When they are translated to PDF, LaTeX is a very common choice. That is because LaTeX isn't a markup language, but a typesetting tool. Unlike reStructuredText and Markdown which are designed for ease of use, LaTeX is designed to make documents look good.

Here is how I define my sample list in LaTeX

\begin { itemize } \item Item A \item Item A \begin { enumerate } \item First Numbered Inner Item \item Second Numbered Inner Item \end { enumerate } \item Item C \end { itemize }

Halfway between the markup languages and HTML in verbosity, LaTeX lists are of medium difficulty to write. If this example makes LaTeX look easy, please realize that while lists are easy to understand, other structures like LaTeX tables can quickly get out of hand. LaTeX's reputation for being an arcane tool is a well deserved one.

# Modifying Generated LaTeX

Several book authors, including ourselves, have written books using reStructuredText or Markdown, generated the LaTeX, then modified the LaTeX before rendering the PDF. The approach is seductive: You get the ease of a markup language combined with the formatting precision of LaTeX.

Or do you?

The problem my wife and I have faced is that the combination of LaTeX packages and tools we've assembled for ourselves to write books like Two Scoops of Django is very, very different than what is rendered via docutils ' rst2latex or Sphinx make latex . We've tried to write migration scripts, but have found that we end up spending too much of our time on formatting. That's why we have stuck with hand-crafted artisan LaTeX.

That isn't to say it isn't possible. In fact, Matt Harrison has released a number handsome Python books following this path (reStructuredText to LaTeX). I'm certain there are Markdown books that follow this path too.

# Closing Thoughts

For better or for worse, lists of bullets and numbers are a foundation of how we communicate via the written medium. They allow for terse communication of ideas and thought, but that same terseness can mean we skip over details. Interestingly enough, the very tools that we use to create lists can color our ability and desire to use them.