The block is a title, a standfirst, sections and a list under each. That
is a page of writing, not a screenful of rows, and the app already knows
how to draw one: the About pages' markdown renderer. So the tool states
its report as before and a third projection turns it into markdown, which
is exactly what the report seam was built for -- no tool touched, no
report changed, one new function beside the other two faces.
Being a written page buys the two things a long block most needs and that
a hand-built screen had neither of. Its ## headings are landmarks, so each
pins to the top row while its own section scrolls under it and ^PgUp/^PgDn
step section by section; and the PicoCalc lane picks up Sect up / Sect
down for the same reason a grouped list does. AboutPage already does all
of it, so the page is that page with one verb added.
The frame comes back with it. The bare frame was there to keep a border
off every line a mouse would drag through, which mattered while copying
off the screen was the only way out; saving is the way out now, so the
page can be a normal screen and the save can be advertised where this app
advertises verbs -- the footer hint on a desktop, the lane's one free F3
slot on the console -- instead of in the page's own body, which belongs to
the report. The answer moves to a popup with it: a path is worth reading
carefully, a write can fail, and the page underneath is unchanged and
still there when the popup goes.
Saving markdown is the same decision as drawing it. One source is what the
page renders and what the file holds, and an issue tracker renders it as
written, with no fence and no apology. Every value is a code span, which
is correctness and not taste: a Windows path is full of backslashes that
markdown reads as escapes, and an error a stranger's firmware wrote can
hold an asterisk. A value already holding a backtick gets a longer fence.
Rows are a list and not a table, measured rather than assumed -- a
markdown table's cells are cropped with an ellipsis at 53 columns, and a
bug report whose one long value is cut is missing the half that mattered.
A list item wraps and hangs under its own text at any width.
Two smaller things fell out. A block may carry a caption, the heading a
format that has headings draws above it -- plain and JSON have no use for
one and ignore it. And the host block splits in two, because a "it looks
wrong" report is about the terminal and its reader should not have to pass
the processor architecture on the way to it.
The command line is untouched: aligned records, because that face is a
stream to grep and headings are furniture on it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Jean-Pierre MartineauandClaude Opus 5
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