Re: OL starting with zero

In message <18860635625.20020327191016@w3.org>, Chris Lilley 
<chris@w3.org> writes
>It does not mean, however, that the actual numbering style should be
>hardcoded in the document. Particularly on small devices, lists m,ay
>be renumbered as they do not fit on screen at once and thus are
>presented in chunks.

Would this not be immensely confusing - if a page had to be split up for 
a small device it would surely make more sense for the numbering to be 
continuous? Starting again on each new screen/page would be bizarre and 
unfortunate.  (I think maybe I misunderstood what you meant there?)

>What is needed in the markup is a link - not a hyperlink, but a link -
>between the citation and the particular list item.

I'm not clear on the difference.  A URI could identify a particular list 
item if the item were given an id attribute.

>What is needed in the stylesheet is a way to style the content of the
>link such that it takes the same numbering as the list item it points
>to. This would allow such references to still work when lists are
>edited, merged, split, or their numbering styles altered.

There are too many factors influencing the numbering style: the browser 
would have to actually parse the page being cited in order to apply its 
styles and work out the numbering eventually given to the list item 
being cited.  The cited document might not even be available.

But this doesn't matter: the citation doesn't have to be on the Web - 
how about in a printed document?  Even on-line there's nothing to say 
that the user has to look up the cited document using the same equipment 
as they read the citation. Citations have to be static, they can't 
depend on context - it just wouldn't work.

(In an ideal world perhaps all citations would be given as URIs - but if 
the HTML documents we are citing are also printed documents then this 
doesn't work, and for the foreseeable future they are.)

Thanks very much for the reply
-- 
George

Received on Wednesday, 27 March 2002 17:17:00 UTC