Re: [css3-lists] Too many list styles and a proposal to simplifythem

On Sat, 13 Mar 2004, Ernest Cline wrote:
>>
>> The implementation burden of the 49 or so repeating list styles is very
>> small. It's a table, the contents of which are given by the spec. The
>> usage burden of giving the list each time is huge in comparison.
>
> That assumes that only 49 additional styles need to be implemented.

The implementation burden of 149 repeating list styles is very small too.


> There are a good number such as "lower-swedish" and "upper-swedish"

I have it on good authority that those are the same as lower-alpha
(apparently Swedes don't use their three "additional" letters in
alphabetic numbering contexts).


> Not to mention additional aliases such as "lower-danish" (same as
> "lower-norwegian") and "lower-finnish" (same as "lower-swedish")

I was under the impression that the Danish and the Finnish also only used
the 26 letters of lower-alpha. Is this not true?


> This doesn't even count other systems that don't fit the styles given
> here because of their use of multiple characters where I have assumed
> the use of only one such as "lower-welsh" and "upper-welsh".

So far nobody has given me any hard information on the existence of an
alphabetic Welsh numbering system. Is there one? (As opposed to the
existence of an alphabet -- not every alphabet is used as a numbering
system, as noted above.)


> I haven't even begun to exhaust European languages and already that's an
> additional 8 keywords.

Well, no, it isn't. :-)


> I would not at all be surprised that a complete list, just for the
> alphabetic styles could run to a thousand keywords, and that assumes
> that CSS is ever able to generate a complete list.

My understanding (from speaking with experts on the subject) is that
actually the 90 or so keywords currently in the draft is very close to the
total number of numbering systems in active use.


> Even if the other keywords are kept, I still think my proposal a good
> one. (with the possible exception of "cjkv-ideographic" if the proposed
> keywords exhaust the currently used forms).  The proposal would allow
> for people who want custom or not yet standardized versions of these
> basic algorithms to use them.

There is value in such a generic system -- the problem is that there is a
huge variety of algorithms to choose from. If we introduce this, I'd like
to do so in a version _after_ the current one, since it is of much less
value than the predefined keywords, and I wouldn't want UA implementors to
consider the spec too complicated because of the presence of advanced
features of this kind.

-- 
Ian Hickson                                      )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
U+1047E                                         /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
http://index.hixie.ch/                         `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Sunday, 14 March 2004 18:55:45 UTC