Markdown: nested bullet lists not indented correctly unless using 4 spaces or more

[hsandt]

This is a reboot of https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-18483, so more a bug report than a question, but the bot at the end asked us to reach the Contact form which led me to this space. (but I noticed users can still create new issues on JIRA, so maybe we should just reopen a new one instead?)

Summary:

- the markdown reader (such as README.md display on repository top page) doesn't recognize indentation with 2 spaces and only seems to recognize 4 spaces or more

- this is part of the CommonMark spec (https://spec.commonmark.org/0.29/#lists), so understandable

- however, many markdown editors will indent by 2 spaces by default. BitBucket's own Markdown editor defaults to 4, but if you have already started writing the file with 2-space indent in an external editor, when you edit it in the browser, BitBucket's editor will adapt and set the space indent to 2 (so you will think it's normal).

The issue is now well known as proven by https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37575916/how-to-markdown-nested-list-items-in-bitbucket

My suggestions would be:

a. Support different numbers of indent spacing (at least 2, possibly 1 and 3 although less common)

and/or

b. Add some warning below the editor if detected indent spacing is less than 4 and bullet lists are present

Honestly I'm not sure why the original issue was closed, an issue tracker seems a better place than the Question hub for this, but I'll wait for some replies here first.

[Theodora Boudale · Accepted solution]

Hi @hsandt,

Thank you for the feedback. There is another open feature request about this here:

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/BCLOUD-20822

You can add your vote to it by selecting the Vote for this issue link and add yourself as a watcher (by selecting the Start watching this issue link) if you'd like to get notified via email on updates.

Implementation of new features is done as per our policy here and any updates will be posted in the feature request.

Kind regards,
Theodora