-My field-etc branch in git://git.pseudorandom.co.uk/git/smcv/ikiwiki.git (gitweb:
-<http://git.pseudorandom.co.uk/smcv/ikiwiki.git?a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/field-etc>)
-has some fixes for compatibility with old YAML modules, mostly done by imitating
-Joey's code in IkiWiki::Setup::Yaml. Please consider merging :-) --[[smcv]]
+Now that I have implemented a \[[!ymlfront ...]] directive, I would like to remove support for the old "---" delimited format, because
-> I would if I could *find* it. I checked out the "field-etc" branch, but I can't find the plugins in question under IkiWiki/Plugin; am I looking in the wrong place, or what?
-> --[[KathrynAndersen]]
+* it is fragile (easily breakable)
+* it is non-standard
->> Sorry, I accidentally removed `field-etc` by pushing with `--mirror` from a
->> different checkout. I've put it back; it's a branch from your `ikiplugins.git`,
->> so yes, the code should be in `IkiWiki/Plugin`. --[[smcv]]
+Any objections?
->>> Done a while back, but now I've actually pushed to my repo. --[[KathrynAndersen]]
+> Well, I don't have much standing since I have been too lame to integrate
+> ymlfront into ikiwiki yet. Buy, my opinion is, I liked the old
+> format of putting the YAML literally at the front of the file. It
+> seemed to allow parsing the file as YAML, using any arbitrary YAML
+> processer. And it was nice how it avoided boilerplate. --[[Joey]]
+
+>> The old delimited format also has the advantage of being remarkably similar to the
+>> [MultiMarkDown](http://fletcherpenney.net/multimarkdown/users_guide/multimarkdown_syntax_guide/)
+>> way of including metadata in documents. The only difference is that MMD doesn't expect the
+>> triple-dash separators, but I'm thinking about submitting a patch to MMD to actually support
+>> that syntax. --GB
+
+>>> Yes, the idea was to allow the file to be parsed as YAML, you're right. I just found that I tended to have problems when people used "---" for horizontal rules. However, I have also found that trying to keep it solely as an IkiWiki directive doesn't work either, since sometimes the meta-data I need also contained "]]" which broke the parsing of the directive.
+>>> So I have decided to go for a compromise, and make the delimiter configurable, rather than hardcoded as "---"; the triple-dash is the default, but it can be configured to be something else instead. I haven't pushed the change yet, but I have written it, and it seems to work. -- [[KathrynAndersen]]
+
+>>>> I'm not sure about what kind of problems you're meeting with "---" being used
+>>>> for horizontal rules: isn't it sufficient to just check that (1) the triple-dash
+>>>> is the first thing in the page and (2) there are only YAML-style assignments
+>>>> (and no blank lines) between the two markers? Check #2 would also be enough to
+>>>> support MMD-style metadata, which means (a) no start marker and (b) empty line
+>>>> to mark the end of the metadata block. Would this be supported by the plugin?
+>>>> --GB