FW: OL needs the start attribute

An Ordered List is a series of items in a sequence, a recurrent 
linear pattern.  In the example given, 3/3a/4 represent 3 items 
in a linear pattern (with 3 being first, 3a being second, and 4 
being third).  The problem is that a numbering system does not 
exist that contains these values.  My view is that the 
displaying of 3/3a/4 is presentational and should be handled by 
CSS.  My suggestion would be to allow user defined 
list-style-type in CSS, where a set of values would represent 
some numbering system.  In this case, the values of that user 
defined type would be "1 2 3 3a 4 5 6" ( and so on ).

Regards,
Peter


> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-html-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:www-html-request@w3.org]On Behalf
> Of Christoph Päper
> Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 12:33 PM
> To: www-html@w3.org
> Subject: Re: OL needs the start attribute
> 
> 
> 
> Philip TAYLOR [PC336/H-XP] <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>:
> >
> > The 3/3a/4 dichotomy can surely be addressed only by
> > allowing an individual <LI> not to participate in
> > the general numbering scheme; thus one might postulate
> > a markup such as the following :
> >
> > <li ol=none value="3a"> material for section 3a </li>
> >
> > where 'ol=parent' is otherwise implied, and 'ol="named-ol"'
> > is allowed but rarely if ever needed.
> 
> But it does belong to the list and is also incremented, just not by an
> integer or by a clear algorithm, which is a problem that 
> could be solved
> with a user defined list-style-type in CSS3. Btw.: The 
> tra[d|ns]itional
> attribute "value" only accepts integers.
> Perhaps it's an option to introduce a sub *element* to li 
> (only those in a
> ol), which carries fixed ordinal values. That solution would also be
> backwards and CSS-off compatible -- nevertheless I dislike it for no
> particular reason.
> 
> > [I am using here the convention of an unquoted string for
> >  a keyword and a quoted string for a variable; not sure if
> >  this is in accordance with current or proposed syntax.]
> 
> 
> In X[HT]ML *all* attribute values have to be quoted.
> 
> 
> For breaks in lists I thought about proposing
> 
>   continue="IDREF"
> 
> I guess this could also handle multi-document lists, like in
> 
>   <ol continue="PreviousPage.html#Part1ofThisList">,
> 
> *but* this would require the UA to download and parse one or even more
> documents, which maybe weren't of otherwise interest for the 
> user. Thus a
> fixed "start" attribute would be more economic but less logic.
> 
> Christoph
>

Received on Thursday, 17 October 2002 12:55:11 UTC