OL needs the start attribute

The 'start' attribute on 'ol' needs to be reinstated for XHTML 2.

I know some consider basic numbering in ordered lists to fall within the
"style" domain.  At one point I felt the same way, but I now think that
is severely misguided.  A recent trip to Google Groups confirms this:
witness the number of folks who consciously choose one of the
Transitional DTD's -- or none at all -- over CSS hackery.  

The basic numbering, and where it starts, *IS* significant and should be
available without resorting to some CSS (which may or may not be
available).  A marked-up document should ship with it's numbering
*semantics* intact -- i.e., without resorting to styling.

But <ol> needs 'start'; if it can't number properly, we should just get
rid of it completely -- there are always hacks^H^H^H^H^H alternate
approaches available along the lines of ...

  <ul>
    <li>0. First item in a zero-based list</li>
    <li>1. Second item</li>
    <li>2. Third item</li>
  <ul>

;)


/Jelks

Received on Saturday, 12 October 2002 16:03:17 UTC