[CSS2.1] Counters

Hi,
I think there may be room for additional improvement of the counter
scope text. Is the number of the second div in following case clearly
defined and is the used value 1 or 2 if so (i think it may be defined
to be 1, but it should IMO be 2)?

div:before {content: counter(a_counter); counter-increment: 
a_counter}
<body>
  <div>First div</div>
  <div>Second div</div>
</body>
I think the first counter-level could be reset to 0 at the root
element, and other resets add a level of nesting.


When realising that CSS defines counters to act outside the
document-fragment they are defined for, things get rather unintuitive
for me. There were some changes to this between CSS 2 and CSS 2.1, 
where CSS 2 even specified that a counter defined its scope before
being reset, eg on previous siblings. When testing:
  <ol>
    <li>First</li>
  </ol>
  <li>Outside</li>
none of IE6, Mozilla or Opera8 gives the second li the number 2. The 
only reason i can imagine for wanting a counter to work "outside its 
document fragment" would be to cope with the case:
li:before {counter-reset: ..}
but that dosen't seem very likely.


IMHO it would be preferrable to change:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-CSS21-20050613/generate.html#scope
"
The scope of a counter starts at the first element in the document
that has a 'counter-reset' for that counter and includes the
element's descendants and its following siblings with their
descendants. However, it does not include any elements in the scope 
of a counter created by a 'counter-reset' on a later sibling of the 
element or by a later 'counter-reset' on the same element.
"
to something like:
"
The scope of all counters used in a document are reset to 0 at the 
root element unless explicitly set to a different value. Each element
that has 'counter-reset' for a counter creates a new scope that 
includes its descendants.
"
(I'm not sure if i missread the last sentence, how do you do multiple
counter-resets on the same element?)


Finally, since lists are easy to misstype and missunderstand, 
shouldn't the example use more modern markup that closes the
elements?

 /Staffan

Received on Wednesday, 15 June 2005 16:36:15 UTC