From: Jamis Buck <jamis_buck@...>
Date: 2005-02-21T03:25:16+09:00
Subject: Re: YAML/RedCloth Question

On 02:59 Mon 21 Feb     , mikeleonard wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I'm very new to Ruby, so appy-polly-loggies in advance if the answer to
> this is obvious.
> 
> I have a file, qbf.yml, the contents of which are:
> 
> ----------------qbf.yml----------------
> title: "on dogs and foxes"
> author: "q.b. foks, esq."
> text: "the quick brown
> 
> fox jumps
> 
> over
> 
> the lazy dog"
> ---------------------------------------
> 
> I want to import it into a Ruby hash and use RedCloth to convert the
> "text" portion to html. The code I'm using is this:
> 
> ----------------qbf.rb----------------
> require 'yaml'
> require 'redcloth'
> 
> qbf=YAML::load(File.open('qbf.yml'))
> 
> puts RedCloth.new(qbf["text"]).to_html
> --------------------------------------
> 
> The output I get from this is:
> 
> <p>the quick brown
> fox jumps
> over
> the lazy dog</p>
> 
> Whereas, I would like:
> 
> <p>the quick brown</p>
> <p>fox jumps</p>
> <p>over</p>
> <p>the lazy dog</p>
> 
> It looks like when I import the YAML, my paragraph breaks get eaten up.
> I'd like to avoid this if at all possible. I'm sure the solution is
> very simple, but I can't seem to get my head around it. Any help would
> be greatly appreciated.

Use triple line breaks to indicate paragraph breaks. It's just the way
YAML works:

1) A single newline gets eaten (resulting in one long line with no
   newlines)

2) Two newlines get collapsed to one newline

3) Three newlines give you the expected blank line between paragraphs

Also, a syntax like this might read a little easier in your yaml file:

   title: on dogs and foxes
   author: q.b. foks, esq.
   text: >-
     the quick brown
   

     fox jumps
   

     over
   

     the lazy dog

(Notice the quotes are almost always optional, except when there is
some question as to what format the data should be. Also, the >- after
text: says to eat all following lines wih a greater indentation level
and treat them as a single text value.)

Hope that helps,

Jamis

-- 
Jamis Buck
jamis_buck@byu.edu
http://jamis.jamisbuck.org
------------------------------
"I am Victor of Borge. You will be assimil-nine-ed."