Re[2]: List Module Offering

Daniel Yacob writes:
>>> Is there a Cyrillic list style?  I didn't see it listed in
>>> the spec.

Bert Bos writes:
>> Good point. I would expect it exists. (And there also you could raise
>> the question whether the Ukraine, e.g., uses its extra letters...)

Daniel Yacob writes:
> I did bounce this off of a Russian office mate who confirmed that
> they did use cyrillic for lists.  He emailed home to double check
> his memory, a family member there confirmed and pointed out that
> with the cyrillic typewriter there was no choice but to use
> cyrillic in lists, so they seem to have an established tradition
> for it.
Indeed. We do use Russian letters for numbering and I guess Ukrainians
and Byelorussians do the same with their alphabets.

> He mentioned that they also use roman numerals for lists in russian
> literature  -not sure how that mapped onto the cyrillic typewriter ;-)
We use both upper-roman and decimal numbering as well as
"upper-Russian" and "lower-Russian".

> Anyway, it seems a lower-cyrillic and upper-cyrillic should be
> considered for inclusion.
I agree but a thorough research has to be done. The matter is there
are some not so obvious reasons for not including our system into
current CSS version (IMHO).

For example, "lower-latin" and "upper-latin" are strictly mapped to
the corresponding writing system while traditional Russian numbering
is not that strict in this respect. One might omit the letter 'yo'
(7th letter of the alphabet), the letter "i kratkoye' (11th letter),
and some others. In fact it is a commonplace to number lists without
these letters, *but* it is strictly speaking illegal.

This results in an additional CSS property which may drive you off the
inclusion of "lower-russian" and "upper-russian". A possible solution
might be:

Name: 'list-style-skip'
Value: <Comma separated list of Unicode values> | none
Initial: none
Applies to: all elements with 'display: list-item'
Inherited: yes
Percentages: N/A
Media: visual
Computed value: specified

OR you may think of four new values for Russian numbering instead of
two. Something like lower-russian and lower-russian-short (with
the latest skipping certain letters defined somewhere in the spec).

Furthermore, it'd be extremely unwise to introduce "upper-cyrillic"
and "lower-cyrillic" (as Daniel suggests). Is there a need to explain
that Russian/Ukrainian/Byelorussian/Macedonian/etc. etc. etc. alphabets
are all different? Instead, separate values are needed for all the
alphabets (and perhaps four values for Russian numbering).

---
The unresolved issue concerning how alphabetic systems wrap at the
end of the alphabet applies to the Russian numbering system as well.
For example, current implementations (at least Opera6, NS4.07, IE5.5,
and Mozilla for Windows) add an extra letter and start from the
beginning when lower(upper)-alpha(latin) is used.
One of the evident disadvantages of this behavior is decreased human
readability.

Name: 'list-style-end'
Value: add-character | rewind | none
Initial: add-character
Applies to: all elements with 'display: list-item'
Inherited: yes
Percentages: N/A
Media: visual
Computed value: specified

Well, I know it's a bad habit to try to introduce new properties...
Nevertheless, the current CSS3 lists draft finds it needless to try to
solve all the above-mentioned. Um, did I miss anything? I thought the
level of CSS spec being prepared is *three*. When are these problems
addressed then?

Links:
[CSS3-Lists]: http://www.w3.org/2002/
[CSS2-Lists]: http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-CSS2-19980512/generate.html#lists

Best regards,
---
  Alexander "Croll" Savenkov         http://www.thecroll.com/
  w3@hotbox.ru                            http://croll.da.ru/

P. S. Daniel, we don't use typewriters anymore. ;)

Received on Monday, 29 July 2002 03:10:07 UTC