Presing Tab key after a word in markdown file creates XML tags

[jaywick]

• VSCode Version: 1.7.2 (7ba55c5)
• OS Version: Windows 10.0.14393

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create a test.md file

2. Add a sentence of text such as

    Lorem ipsum sit dolar amet.
   

3. Put your keyboard cursor after Lorem

4. Press Tab

Expected: Spaces or tabs to be added between Lorem and ipsum
Result: Lorem word gets converted into an XML tag and auto closed, leaving us with

    <Lorem></Lorem> ipsum sit dolar amet.

In Action

[mjbvz]

This is coming from Emmet. To disable this, add:

    "emmet.excludeLanguages": ["markdown"],

to your settings.

Although this is currently the expected behavior, I think we should probably disable emmet expansions in markdown by default because this behavior can be annoying during normal writing. @ramya-rao-a Any thoughts?

[egamma]

@ramya-rao-a this behaviour is a consequence of #9500, which has as the goal to not hard code in which language modes emmet is enabled for. As a heuristic #9500 uses the grammar's scope name hierarchy as a hint. This heuristic has worked pretty well.

The scope of the markdown grammar is text.html.markdown. This means Markdown is treated as a specialization of html and since emmets supports html, emmet is enabled in Markdown as well.

According the emmet doc there is no special syntax profile available for Markdown #9500 (comment).

So a quick fix would be to:

• hard code an exclusion for markdown in #isEmmetEnableMode
• change the scope name of the markdown grammar, so that it doesn't inherit from html, not sure what the consequences of this are.

@mrmlnc do you have other ideas how to improve the support for emmet in Markdown and avoid the surprise described in this issue?

[mrmlnc]

Hello, @egamma,

I see the same way as you suggested above. But, perhaps, we can also disable Markdown in the settings, as it was for files.exclude.

If you decide to disable Emmet inside Markdown, it is better to first option.

But my 2 cents:

Markdown is a lightweight markup language and it presupposes the existence of HTML constructs within yourself. Thus, it seems to me, to disable Emmet inside Markdown is not correct.

P.S. Small news: the creator of Emmet had already started work on the second version aka 2.0.0 🐼

[egamma]

@mrmlnc thanks for the feedback. I agree with your point that disabling emmet without some way to re-enable it, if someone really wants emmet is better than to totally disable it.

Glad to hear about Emmet 2.0.

[mjbvz]

@egamma Could "markdown" just be in the default setting for emmet.excludeLanguages? That would stop most users from triggering emmet unexpectedly in markdown files, while still allowing users to opt back in to emmet for markdown if they wish

[egamma]

@mjbvz the idea is good. It has a small drawback. If someone defines emmet.excludedLanguages in the settings, then they will not profit from this fix.

However, if someone if familiar with this setting and then they know how to disable emmet in markdown, if they are annoyed by it. Bottom line I'm fine with this fix.

[mjbvz]

Ok, I've merged in #17094 which adds "markdown" to the default list of excluded languages. Not a perfect solution, but it should stop many users from hitting this behavior unexpectedly