[whatwg] [HTML5] Named start values for lists?

[Lachlan Hunt]

Henri Sivonen wrote:
> On Jun 27, 2006, at 09:46, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
>> <ol id="part1">
>> ...
>> </ol>
>>
>> <ol id="part2" continue="part1">
>> ...
>> </ol>
>>
>> However, there are several issues that would need to be addressed:
> 
> Hopefully, the issue list adequately demonstrates that the continue 
> attribute is way too complicated considering that the old start 
> attribute solves the numbering problem in a very pragmatic way.

The start and value attributes certainly do solve the majority of the 
use cases.  They don't semantically link the lists together and they 
place the responsibility of calculating the starting values upon the 
authoring/publishing system, rather than the browser.

What are the specific use cases that require the lists to be 
semantically linked?  If there are any, could they be addressed using a 
microformats approach?

e.g.  Lists with class="split-list" (or any other class name) that share 
the same title could be defined by a microformat to be linked lists. 
Perhaps, the class name isn't even required, the matching titles could 
be sufficient.

<ol class="split-list" title="Fruit">
   <li>Apples</li>
   <li>Bananas<li>
</ol>

<ol class="split-list" title="Fruit" start="3">
   <li>Coconuts</li>
   <li>Dates</li>
   <li>Figs</li>
</ol>

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/