[whatwg] The <li> element's feedback

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Christoph P?per wrote:
>
> Simon Pieters:
> > It was pointed out to me that the start='' attribute (and the corresponding
> > DOM attribute) currently defaults to 1. This could, AFAICT, reaonably
> > trivially be changed to make it depend on the direction of the list and the
> > number of <li> children.
> 
> Or you would introduce an |end| attribute, because 'start' is not the same as
> 'first'...
> 
> I think it has been shown, that the meta attribute |reverse| would not work in
> HTML, it would have to be a "command" attribute, i.e. it doesn't describe the
> ordering of the following list items, but their indended display. This would
> make it presentational and thereby not suitable for HTML. It would belong into
> CSS, but that isn't very good at reordering boxes.

I don't really follow. What's wrong with how the spec works now?


On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Jerason Banes wrote:
>
> To add to what Christoph is saying, perhaps there's a better way to look 
> at this problem? A reverse list has both a start and an end, just like 
> any other list. The key is that it's displayed in the opposite order of 
> a regular list.
> 
> This raises the question, why does the list need to be *serialized* in 
> reverse order? Given that it's a display attribute, wouldn't it make 
> more sense to force the UA into rendering the list in reverse? e.g.:
> 
> <ol style="order: reverse;">
> <li>one</li>
> <li>two</li>
> <li>three</li>
> <li>four</li>
> <li>five</li>
> </ol>
> 
> Which would then render like this:
> 
> 5. five
> 4. four
> 3. three
> 2. two
> 1. one
>
> [...]
> 
> Obviously this solution puts a bit more of the onus on the User Agent to 
> render the list correctly, but I think it's semantically more correct 
> than trying to encapsulate the display data in the DOM ordering. This 
> also provides backward compatibility as UAs that don't understand the 
> reverse attribute will still number the list correctly. (Whereas the 
> previous solutions would result in the numbering being reversed in older 
> browsers.)

I think this would be somewhat confusing for authors. I don't buy that 
it's any "more correct" than what we have now, either.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 22 April 2008 23:56:09 UTC