Nested Lists and adjacent bullets

There appears to be an inconsistency between CSS1 and standard
publishing practices with regards to the rendering of nested lists.

In the normal case, if you have a nested list, you will have a
scenario something like the following.

   Document:

      <ol>
        <li> 
          <p>foo</p>
          <ol>
            <li>
              <p>bar</p>
            </li>
          </ol>
        </li>
      </ol>


   Frame construction:

      +<ol>--------------------------------------+
      |       +<li>----------------------------+ |
      | +---+ | +<p>-------------------------+ | |
      | | 1 | | | foo                        | | |
      | +---+ | +----------------------------+ | |
      |       |                                | |
      |       | +<ol>------------------------+ | |
      |       | |       +<li>--------------+ | | |
      |       | | +---+ | +<p>-----------+ | | | |
      |       | | | 1 | | | bar          | | | | |
      |       | | +---+ | +--------------+ | | | |
      |       | |       +------------------+ | | |
      |       | +----------------------------+ | |
      |       +--------------------------------+ |
      +------------------------------------------+


   Rendering:

      1 foo

        1 bar


(...where the elements are assumed to have their usual 'display'
values and generated content as given in the suggested UA stylesheet,
and the anonymous boxes above are :before marker boxes).

All fine and good so far. However, if you have the nested list as the
first node of the outer list, you end up with this:

   Document:

      <ol>
        <li> 
          <ol>
            <li>
              <p>bar</p>
            </li>
          </ol>
        </li>
      </ol>


   Frame construction:

      +<ol>--------------------------------------+
      |       +<li>----------------------------+ |
      |       | +<ol>------------------------+ | |
      |       | |       +<li>--------------+ | | |
      | +---+ | | +---+ | +<p>-----------+ | | | |
      | | 1 | | | | 1 | | | bar          | | | | |
      | +---+ | | +---+ | +--------------+ | | | |
      |       | |       +------------------+ | | |
      |       | +----------------------------+ | |
      |       +--------------------------------+ |
      +------------------------------------------+


   Rendering:

      1 1 bar


This is, I am told, against standard publishing practices, and
apparently "anyone in the publishing industry would faint if they saw
multiple list symbols on the same line."

So to be good publishers, what we want for the second case is:

   Frame construction:

      +<ol>--------------------------------------+
      |       +<li>----------------------------+ |
      | +---+ | .............................. | |
      | | 1 | | : (anonymous empty inline)   : | |
      | +---+ | :............................: | |
      |       |                                | |
      |       | +<ol>------------------------+ | |
      |       | |       +<li>--------------+ | | |
      |       | | +---+ | +<p>-----------+ | | | |
      |       | | | 1 | | | bar          | | | | |
      |       | | +---+ | +--------------+ | | | |
      |       | |       +------------------+ | | |
      |       | +----------------------------+ | |
      |       +--------------------------------+ |
      +------------------------------------------+


   Rendering:

      1

        1 bar


So. How can we reconcile the CSS2 specs with standard publishing
practice?

Padding and margins won't cut it (because the book says:

# For the :before pseudo-element, the baseline in the marker box will
# be vertically aligned with the baseline in the first line box of the
# principal box. If the principal box contains no line boxes, or if
# there is a block box within the principal box that is above the
# first line box, the top outer edge of the marker box will be aligned
# with the top outer edge of the principal box.
   -- CSS2, 12:6:1

...so it matters not how much padding you use, the marker box will
just move down with the text).

Also, we can't simply add empty content using :before, since the
marker itself is the :before pseudo-element.

Therefore, it would seem that we need a rule which will place an
anonymous empty inline box as the first child of any element which has
a generated marker box, if any of the elements between the element
with the marker box and the first descendant line box of that element
have a generated marker box.

This probably needs to be a property (say, 'adjacent-markers' with
values "allow || never || inherit" or something, inherited and with
the initial value "allow").

Are there any other possibilities?

This was escalated from Bugzilla bug 38832:
   http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38832

-- 
Ian Hickson                            ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._   
http://www.bath.ac.uk/%7Epy8ieh/        `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)
                                        (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-' fL
Member, Mozilla Quality Assurance     _..`--'_..-_/  /--'_.' ,'
Browser Standards Compliance Team    (il).-''  (li).'  ((!.-'

Received on Tuesday, 13 June 2000 16:48:32 UTC