1.2 Shape the structure

Planned

Tables stop feeling like pipe syntax.

After 1.0. Version numbers mark the intended order, not dates or paid upgrades; scope is provisional and may change with evidence and demand. Checked against the development repository on 15 October 2026.

In short

Markdown tables are rows of pipes and dashes, and editing them by hand is tedious. 1.2 makes the editor understand them.

Move between cells from the keyboard; add, remove and reorder rows and columns; and copy a rectangle of cells to or from a spreadsheet.

In practice

Copy a block of cells from a spreadsheet, paste it into a note, and get a Markdown table you can carry on editing cell by cell.

Why it isn’t simple

  • A table is text pretending to be a grid. Pipes, alignment colons, escaped pipes, code containing pipes and rows with missing cells all have to be read correctly before the editor even knows which cell you’re in.
  • Everyone formats tables differently. Some pad every column, some don’t; some start and end rows with a pipe, some don’t. Editing one cell mustn’t reformat the whole table, or every small change shows up as a rewrite in version control.
  • Spreadsheets don’t speak Markdown. A paste from a spreadsheet brings tabs, quotes, line breaks inside cells and sometimes HTML. Each has to become valid cell text, and copying back has to give the spreadsheet something it understands.
  • One action, one undo. Adding a column touches every row of the table, but it still has to undo in a single step.

What it won’t do

  • Tidying a table’s formatting is something you ask for; nothing reformats it on its own.
  • One undo reverses one table change.
  • Nothing else in the file is normalised along the way.

What it covers

1.2Shape the structure

Planned

  • Table-aware keyboard navigation
  • Add, remove and reorder rows/columns
  • Rectangular copy/paste and spreadsheet conversion
  • Explicit formatting, coherent undo, no unrelated normalization

Depends on Keep your place.

Product direction, October 2026Plan reference 1.2

Builds on

Leads to

What the labels mean

Planned
an accepted direction; the detailed scope isn’t committed.