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

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>>
>> The implementation burden of 149 repeating list styles is very small too.
>
> It depends. And they surely make the specification more voluminous,
> especially if you actually define the meanings (instead of leaving it to
> implementations, which would be virtually guaranteed to be
> incompatible).

Compared to the burden it would place on authors instead, it's a small
burden. It doesn't really depend on much.


>>> There are a good number such as "lower-swedish" and "upper-swedish"
>>
>> I have it on good authority that those are the same as lower-alpha
>> (apparently Swedes don't use their three "additional" letters in
>> alphabetic numbering contexts).
>
> Have you checked this from the applicable national institutions
> officially, and are you sure they understood the question correctly?

I have corresponded with people who claim to have done so, yes. (I don't
have the time to follow up these issues with each country's national
institutions myself, so I really on expert advice.) If you would like to
contact the relevant people to verify this matter, I would be very
grateful.


> As far as I know, there is no standard for this, in Sweden or in
> Finland, so assuming that the nationally standardized alphabet and
> alphabetic order will always be ignored is rather risky, and most
> probably just wrong.

This isn't just an assumption, as I said. It is simply following i18n
expert advice.


>> I was under the impression that the Danish and the Finnish also only
>> used the 26 letters of lower-alpha. Is this not true?
>
> On similar grounds, no. Besides, for Finnish, the national standard on
> alphabetic order gives two options: letter "w" can be regarded as a
> variant "v" (hence, IMHO, to be skipped in alphabetic numbering), or
> treated as a letter of its own, as in English.

If you can provide me with an exact official algorithm, I would be happy
to add it to the list.


>> So far nobody has given me any hard information on the existence of an
>> alphabetic Welsh numbering system.
>
> Is there hard information on the existence of _well-defined_ alphabetic
> numbering systems in general?

Certainly. The use of the English alphabet, wrapping from "Z" to "AA", is
well established, and, in the CSS3 Lists draft, well-defined.


> The mere fact that current CSS specifications leave it open what happens
> after 'Z' or 'z' should be alarming.

CSS3 defines these matters in detail.


> If such a simple issue cannot be resolved

It _is_ resolved. What on earth makes you think it cannot be resolved?


> how would it be possible to find correct answers to questions involving
> cultural dependencies and varying practices? It m

(You didn't finish your sentence.)


> I would say that a generic system would be _more_ valuable in many ways,
> including definiteness.

As I explained before, pushing the burden of implementation onto the
author is not good design.


> Actually list-style-character would, en passant, also solve the problem of
> specifying "list bullets" that comply with several national standards,
> which is not possible by current CSS specifications. E.g.,
> ul { list-style-character: "\u2013"; }

This will be possible with ::marker as defined in the current draft.

-- 
Ian Hickson                                      )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
U+1047E                                         /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
http://index.hixie.ch/                         `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Monday, 15 March 2004 05:36:23 UTC