Ordered List & attribute deprecation

Excuse me if this has been discussed already; it didn't show up
in my search results.

I was just wondering why 'start' and 'value' have been deprecated
for <OL> and <LI>. I know that CSS2 can simulate them, but they do
seem to be structural markup, not presentational, which is the basis
for most deprecations in HTML 4, and nothing has been introduced to
replace them, which is the basis for most other deprecations.

Flipping through the archives, I came across the 'continue'
attribute, which was dropped with HTML 3.0. Combined with an id
reference (instead of used as a boolean attribute), I think it
would make a useful replacement for 'start', as well as being
more structurally-oriented than 'start' and 'value'. It's time
seems to be past, though; I don't think it can be implemented
as XML & CSS (although the HTML 3.0 boolean attribute can).

BTW, the ordered list example right before section 10.3 of the
HTML 4.01 specification uses 'value', but isn't marked as a
deprecated example.


References:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/lists.html#h-10.2
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/1996May/0373.html
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/seqlists.html
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/generate.html#counters

Received on Thursday, 27 July 2000 17:57:25 UTC