[Suggestion]: Allow Inline Carryover Tag Placement

[vhyrro]

Currently, within Norg, there are two ways of applying a macro onto an object. The weak carryover tag (+this) and the strong carryover tag (#this). These exist because a user may want to apply a macro non-recursively as well as recursively.

There are many problems with this old syntax. In the end, it boils down to the following snippet:

- Hello
-- Hello
+color red
- World!

According to the specification, this should be a single list. A parser like tree-sitter cannot parse this, however - when parsing list items, a DEDENT node can optionally be produced by the parser to specify that a list has "dedented". To determine if such a dedent should be produced, the parser can look ahead to the next line to count the number of -s and determine the nesting level of the next item.

When there is a tag above the list item, the parser cannot look ahead to the next set of -s and parse the carryover tag simultaneously. Thus, the best it can do is create a separate list in the syntax tree. This is not desired behaviour.

This proposal makes carryover tags inline, thus permitting new placement in the AST. When a tag is placed above an object (like a list), that list is then treated separately, as it should be. Therefore:

- List item one
#tag
- List item two

are two completely separate lists.

To alter the list item itself, one can inline the tag:

- List item one
- #tag
  List item two

Now parsing succeeds, and the example creates one single list.

Further Considerations

This change is highly coupled with a different change called "Make Attributes and Macros Separate". In that change we will describe a third way of applying a macro to an object.

With this new proposal, there are only two ways of invoking a macro. Either:

• On a whole object (like a whole list)
• On the paragraph inside a list item (but not the item itself).

The attribute/macro proposal will introduce the third way :)

[mrossinek]

To be explicit about the coupling with #38:

This proposal will only allow the placement of + and # "inline" where inline means at the beginning of a line with an optional detached modifier in front, correct?