As mentioned in that ticket, I’m still reluctant to add this to the [x]it! file specification. On the one hand it seems like an obvious and useful feature, but on the other hand it’s unfortunately pretty difficult to implement in tooling. For example, I tried to add experimental support for nested subitems in the Sublime Text plugin, but I eventually had to give up, just because the syntax highlighting engine is so limited in regards to recursion. It’s the same – or much worse – for other editors.
At the end of the day, I feel that it doesn’t help to add such a feature to the file format, if tools then cannot deal with it properly. Right now, the spec is so simple that it can be implemented in maybe a day or so. I see a great deal of value in keeping the hurdle for tool creators small. But it’s a pretty tricky balancing act in the end.
As mentioned in that ticket, I’m still reluctant to add this to the [x]it! file specification. On the one hand it seems like an obvious and useful feature, but on the other hand it’s unfortunately pretty difficult to implement in tooling. For example, I tried to add experimental support for nested subitems in the Sublime Text plugin, but I eventually had to give up, just because the syntax highlighting engine is so limited in regards to recursion. It’s the same – or much worse – for other editors.
At the end of the day, I feel that it doesn’t help to add such a feature to the file format, if tools then cannot deal with it properly. Right now, the spec is so simple that it can be implemented in maybe a day or so. I see a great deal of value in keeping the hurdle for tool creators small. But it’s a pretty tricky balancing act in the end.