Re: [css3-lists] Specifying new list-types

On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Belov, Charles <Charles.Belov@sfmta.com> wrote:
> Tab Atkins Jr. wrote on Wednesday, September 08, 2010 5:58 PM
>> >> >
>> >> > What about repeating?  Binary would go "0 1 0 1 0 1".
>> >>
>> >> Is there any real need for repeating?  It's an easy thing
>> to do, but
>> >> I don't think I've ever seen a repeating list marker used in the
>> >> wild.
>> >
>> > I'm thinking of lists like
>> >
>> > * first item
>> > # second item
>> > * third item
>> > # fourth item
>> >
>> > or
>> >
>> > * first item
>> > # second item
>> > @ third item
>> > * fourth item
>> >
>> > Not saying this is a real-life case, just illustrating.
>> >
>> > Again, this would probably be a marketing use (I'm in our Marketing
>> > unit, so I tend to think about such things) rather than day-to-day
>> > office use.
>>
>> Right, I understand the use, I just haven't seen it in the
>> wild.  Has your Marketing unit ever used anything like that,
>> or do you have materials that show a list like that?  If
>> there's actual usage I'll throw it in.
>
> Not to my knowledge.  I was just brainstorming.  We marketing
> folks (actually, I wear both hats or I wouldn't be tracking w3-styles)
> like the "cool" factor, so tend to lean towards enabling things that
> aren't done now because they are harder to do.  I'm not even
> anticipating doing this.  I'm just trying to think of things a
> marketing type might like to do.
>
> You, on the other hand, are quite reasonably trying to manage the
> scope of this project and keep it reasonable.
>
> So, no, I don't have a real-world use case for either this or for
> numbering lists using one, two, ... ten, eleven as words, but I
> wonder whether it's not done because nobody wants to do it or
> because it is currently so hard.  Yes, one could type these things
> out, but then there is the issue of alignment that handling the
> numbering through CSS would make so much easier.
>
> Still, very definitely on the outside edge of nice-to-have and
> I totally understand wanting to see a case of folks actually
> doing this sort of stuff on a regular basis to justify spending
> time on it (and adding to browser code bloat).

Well, it's not really an issue.  It's a simplification of the symbolic
type, after all - rather than looping back and multiplying, you just
loop back.  And it would be a replacement for the "string" type - the
current string type collapses into a repeating type with a single
glyph.

I ask less for justification (though that's useful) and more to ensure
that I'm solving real problems.  Theorycraft is fun and all, but if I
define something that ends up not actually correctly solving problems
in practice, that's an issue.

That said, a repeating type is so simple that, shrug, might as well?  I dunno.


> (And actually, one could do the one, two, ... ten, eleven... or the
> cycling symbol thing using your schema as it is now.  They'd just
> have to make sure they specified enough glyphs manually in the
> declaration that the numbering wouldn't roll over to the default
> format in any lists that they chose to use the format, e.g.,

While I object to that theoretically as not being robust, it turns out
that there are several real-world marker-numbering schemes that are
intrinsically limited in how far they can go (I don't mean like
armenian only goes up to 999,999 - I mean like "can only number
bullets up to 20 or 30).  So this sort of thing occurs without
technology anyway.  ^_^

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 9 September 2010 20:03:03 UTC