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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

org-mode tables are great, but they're only easy to type because org-mode does the dynamic resizing and border drawing for you. Markdown is supposed to be simple to type in any plain text editor.

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You can still have simpler table syntax that's nice to read but easier to maintain. For my own markup language (http://breuleux.net/quaint_demo/) I implemented this syntax:

    + Name    + Occupation
    | Alice   | Accountant
    | Bob     | Baker
    | Charles | Car salesman

Headers are easier to make and the last column does not require a trailing marker. It's still some work to align columns other than the last, but that's not a requirement and I'd still much rather have a non-aligned ASCII table than nothing at all.

Yeah, the alignment of columns is a big issue. If you have 100 rows, and add another with a cell that is longer than any other cell in that column, you've got to either edit 100 rows or live with a much harder to read table.

Or use a text editor that supports region editing. I agree with you, but this isn't a complete failing of that syntax.

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