Re: [css3-lists] Too many list styles and a proposal to simplifythem

> [Original Message]
> From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
>
> On Fri, 12 Mar 2004, Ernest Cline wrote:
> >
> > The net result is 49 fewer list styles and 76 fewer keywords,
> > plus an additional 5 styles and keywords that could be dropped
> > if the styles that are part of CSS 2 but not CSS 2.1 are dropped.
> > In addition there would be no need for additional keywords
> > for styles that meet the definition of one of these four values.
>
> No, the net result is you are moving the burden of complexity from the UA
> implementers (a small group) to the authors (potentially hundreds of
> millions of people).
>
> As an author, I know that I most definitely prefer writing:
>
>    ol { list-style: lower-alpha; }
>
> ...than:
>
>    ol { list-style: repeating "abcdefghijklmnpqrstuvwxyz" "."; }
>
> ...not least of which because the first is correct, and the second is
> missing an "o", an error that I would almost certainly have missed.
>
> The implementation burden of the 49 or so repeating list styles is very
> small. It's a table, the contents of which are given by the spec. The
> usage burden of giving the list each time is huge in comparison.

That assumes that only 49 additional styles need to be implemented.
There are a good number such as "lower-swedish" and
"upper-swedish" Not to mention additional aliases such
as "lower-danish" (same as "lower-norwegian") and "lower-finnish"
(same as "lower-swedish")  that it would make sense to include.
This doesn't even count other systems that don't fit the styles given
here because of their use of multiple characters where I have assumed
the use of only one such as "lower-welsh" and "upper-welsh".  I haven't
even begun to exhaust European languages and already that's
an additional 8 keywords.  I would not at all be surprised that a complete
list, just for the alphabetic styles could run to a thousand keywords,
and that assumes that CSS is ever able to generate a complete list.

Even if the other keywords are kept, I still think my proposal a good
one. (with the possible exception of "cjkv-ideographic" if the proposed
keywords exhaust the currently used forms).  The proposal would allow
for people who want custom or not yet standardized versions of
these basic algorithms to use them.  Thus, instead of waiting for
"lower-swedish" to be added, a user could go ahead and use
ol {list-style: repeating "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvxyzåäö" ".";}

Received on Sunday, 14 March 2004 18:57:55 UTC