Re: Tree presented lists (was: Suggestion)

Tantek said:
"I think list-style-type could be a good way to achieve this kind of
stylistic effect, but the name of the value "tree" sounds a bit too general,
as one can think of numerous "tree-like" ways of displaying lists.

perhaps something like
  list-style-type: outline;
or
  list-style-type: tree-outline;
or
  something else?"


I'm not particularly hung up on exactly what what call it. I agree that
"tree" is pretty generic. I just modified what John Mansheim suggested,
which was a deprecated example of "<UL type=tree>" and I was interested
enough in the idea that I tried converting it to CSS instead.

Tantek continued:
"Another question - can items in such lists be numbered, e.g. using your
example:

 *-+--- 1. first
   |--- 2. second
   |-+- 3. third
   | |--- a. first nested
   | |--- b. second nested
   | |--- c. third nested
   +--- 4. forth (resumed)"

Hmmmm, that is a really good question. I figured some one in this forum
would consider all sorts of issues I hadn't thought about, so I'm really
glad you thought about that.

I suppose no one ever asks "How can you get the list to use discs and
numbers at the same time?"

I presume it would be undesirably bulky to add a "outline-decimal," and
outline-everyothernumberingsystemthereis.

Would it sound daft to let list-style-type to allow multiple values? i.e.

.example { list-style-type: outline, decimal }

While I acknowledge that this could make for some potentially ugly-looking
lists, (i.e. list-style-type: outline, disc, katakana, armenian), I think
that effect would only be achieved by web authors who either /want/ to
create an ugly list, or want to see if it will crash a web browser.

The only othe idea I can think of here, is to create a whole new property.
Now, the exact name doesn't matter as much as the idea, but just guessing on
possible names, an example might be:

.example { list-whitespace: outline; list-style-type: decimal }
.example .example { list-style-type: alpha }

Maybe that could create the example you provided above. The benefit of
creating a new property, is that you can create more values than just
"outline," like maybe "dotted-outline," "dashed-outline," and so-on. Maybe
list-whitespace isn't the proper name... I can't think of a better one. But
how does that idea sound?

Received on Friday, 20 July 2001 15:21:42 UTC