syntax seems weird, thoughts on an alternative

diff --git a/doc/todo/support_multi-row_table_headers.mdwn b/doc/todo/support_multi-row_table_headers.mdwn
index 3543eef7d6493aa628d31e7d78aee4fda6f01e70..2b22d5d3ec2e4d71082fcf0ebe1c5330a203b51e 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/todo/support_multi-row_table_headers.mdwn
+++ b/doc/todo/support_multi-row_table_headers.mdwn
@@ -11,3 +11,48 @@ It would be great if it were possible to support multi-row table headers in the
 -- [[Jon]]
 
 [[!tag wishlist patch]]
+
+> This seems like weird overloading of the header parameter - it's
+> table data, except when it isn't. Perhaps
+> something like this would be easier to use in practice?
+> (and also more featureful :-) )
+>
+>     \[[!table header="2 rows 1 column" data="""
+>     Name | Platform ||
+>     | Windows | Mac | Linux
+>     ikiwiki | no | yes | yes
+>     Starcraft | yes | yes | via Wine
+>     """]]
+>
+> intended to be rendered like
+>
+> <table>
+> <tr><th>Name</th><th colspan=2>Platform</th>
+> <tr><th></th><th>Windows</th><th>Mac</th><th>Linux</th></tr>
+> <tr><th>ikiwiki</th><td>no</td><td>yes</td><td>yes</td></tr>
+> <tr><th>Starcraft</th><td>yes</td><td>yes</td><td>via Wine</td></tr>
+> </table>
+>
+> (Deliberately switching to plain-text to make it more obvious
+> what's a `<th>` and what's `<td>`.)
+>
+> Vague pseudocode for parsing `headers`
+> (possibly even valid Perl, I'm not sure):
+>
+>     my ($header_rows, $header_cols);
+>     while ($header =~ s/(\d*)\W*(\w+)//) {
+>         my $n = ($1 or 0);
+>         my $what = $2;
+>         if ($what =~ m/rows?/) {
+>             $header_rows = $n;
+>         }
+>         elif ($what =~ m/col(?:umn)?s?/) {
+>             $header_cols = $n;
+>         }
+>     }
+>
+> and it would even be fairly easy to extend to support
+> `(first|last|)\W*(\d*)\W*(\w+)` later, e.g.
+> `header="1 row, first 2 cols, last column"`.
+>
+> --[[smcv]]