CSS3 Lists: Roman numeral list-style-types

I have three suggestions that concern the Roman numeral list-style-type.

Suggestion #1

For some fonts that support the Unicode Roman Numeral glyphs, for 
example "Bitstream Cyberbit" there is a difference in the appearance of 
  <10><10><11>     U+2169 U+2169 U+216A and
  <10><10><10><1>  U+2169 U+2169 U+2169 U+2160.
The first looks wrong in this font due to the difference in the 
appearance of X bewteen U+2169 and U+216A.

While in the case of "Bitstream Cyberbit" this is due to the character 
height of <10> and <11> being different which could and should be 
corrected, it will be an unavoidable consequence of using any monospace 
font that the values for 21,22,31,32 will appear have different 
appeances for the X's in at least the spacing.

Therefore, I suggest that lower-roman should not use the glyphs U+217A 
and U+217B, and upper-roman should not use the glyphs U+216A and U+216B.
This would require changing substeps 9 and 10 of step 1 to read as 
follows:

9. While the number is greater than 10, add X U+2169 and subtract 10.
10. If the number is greater than 0, then add the appropriate roman 
numeral from I U+2160 (1) to X U+2169 (10). For example, if the number 
is 8, add VIII U+2167.


Suggestion #2:
In my opinion, one reason why glyphs for XI and XII were included in 
the standard were so that a standard set of gylphs would exist for 
roman numerals on clock faces. Despite my first suggestion, I can see 
where some people would wish to use those glyphs. Therefore, assuming  
Suggestion #1 is adopted, Let me suggest two new non-repeating 
numbering systems:

clock-lower-roman: covering the range 1 to 12 using the glyphs from 
U+2170 to U+217B.

clock-upper-roman: covering the range 1 to 12 using the glyphs from
U+2160 to U+216B.


Suggestion #3:
While I can understand the desire to make use of the glyphs for <5000> 
U+2181 and 10000 U+2182 in making roman numerals, the simple fact is 
that these symbols are seldom taught when roman numerals are taught.
Also, in all other upper/lower pairs of list-style-types, there is a 
one-to-one correspondence between the glyphs used in the lower and 
upper representations. Therefore, I suggest that the system defined as 
upper-roman be renamed and that upper-roman be defined as if it were 
lower roman but with glyphs from the set U+2160 to U+216F. Two possible 
name for the system using U+2181 and U+2182 are fancy-roman and capitol-
roman.

Received on Friday, 7 March 2003 02:55:58 UTC