RE: [css3-lists] [css3-speech] Interaction between list-style-type and speak properties

Tab Atkins Jr. [mailto:jackalmage@gmail.com] wrote on Monday, February 07, 2011 1:04 PM
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Belov, Charles 
> <Charles.Belov@sfmta.com> wrote:
> > There doesn't seem to be anything explicit in either the CSS3 lists 
> > draft (1) or the CSS3 Speech draft (2) as to whether setting 
> > list-style-type to other than normal affects the spoken 
> rendering of 
> > the list item marker.  I am requesting that this be made 
> explicit in 
> > one document or the other, probably in CSS3 Speech.
> 
> Is this a generic issue surrounding generated content, or is 
> it specific just to list markers?
> 
> If it's specific just to list markers, I recommend Speech 
> specifying that the list-style-type is ignored and list 
> markers read in some standard way.  The new Lists spec I'm 
> drafting will allow, for example, images to be used for list 
> counters, which can't be spoken anyway.
 
My understanding of generated content is not comprehensive.
  My understanding of :before and :after is that text 
content would be spoken as is and graphic content would 
not.  I think the difference is that content of list 
markers is well-defined in the specification, while 
:before and :after content is completely arbitrary 
with respect to the specification.   I realize 
improvements to list markers discussed on this list would 
allow arbitrary list markers, so that does muddy things.

> > But in the case of a public meeting, where we have a 
> legally published 
> > agenda, and items are called by the chair by letter, it would be 
> > important to me that the rendered speech be:
> >
> > A. First item
> > B. Second item
> > C. Third item
> >
> > and I would definitely *not* want to leave this decision to 
> the user 
> > agent.
> 
> This is an important case for more than just Speech.  In 
> general, sometimes the list marker is important content and 
> shouldn't be CSS-controlled.
> 
> To solve this, I'm going to propose an 'inline' value for 
> list-style-type and a 'marker' value for display, which lets 
> you write the marker directly in the content, mark it as a 
> marker, then display it like a list item marker.  In this 
> case, Speech should indeed read the actual content of the marker.
> 
> This proposal will show up in the draft sometime this week as 
> I finish out my first draft.

Thank you.  Your solution is probably necessary.  I'm not sure
whether it is, from a content maintainer's perspective, sufficient.

There would be a maintenance issue that most staff copies content
in from Word and won't want to spend time adding this markup 
manually (and if they are using Adobe Contribute or some other
WYSIWYG-only program), they won't be able to add it).

It is relatively simple to tell a user agent to number a list 
A, B, C, etc. -- there is the AA, BB, CC, issue I reported 
that you came up with a solution for, but that's a separate issue 
-- but then we would still need a way to tell CSS3 Speech to read it 
A, B, C, etc.  That is the kind of low-maintenance at the content 
maintainer's end which I was hoping for.

Hope this helps,
Charles Belov
SFMTA Webmaster

Received on Monday, 7 February 2011 23:25:19 UTC