[whatwg] The <li> element's feedback

[Christoph Päper]

Ian Hickson schrieb:
> On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Christoph P�per wrote:
>>
>> I think it has been shown, that the meta attribute |reverse| would not work in
>> HTML, it would have to be a "command" attribute, i.e. it doesn't describe the
>> ordering of the following list items, but their indended display. This would
>> make it presentational and thereby not suitable for HTML. It would belong into
>> CSS, but that isn't very good at reordering boxes.
> 
> I don't really follow. What's wrong with how the spec works now?

Without rereading or much rethinking the thread, the current spec is 
right in that |reversed| describes the actual order of |li|s -- which 
is, what markup should do --, but this doesn't degrade well and it's not 
incremental, because you need to know the number of |ol|'s children 
(which you could hardcode with |start|) in advance to number the first 
item. Therefore someone proposed a command-like |reverse| (no 
participle) attribute that would keep the numbers, but reorder the |li|s 
with them, which is backwards-compatible, but works just as bad for 
incremental rendering (though in a different way) and is not very 
markupish and -- if at all -- should be done on the styling level.

   Logical markup order              Presentational markup order

   <ol><!--spec, compat-->           <ol><!--messy-->
     <li>First        1. First         <li>Third        1. Third
     <li>Second       2. Second        <li>Second       2. Second
     <li>Third        3. Third         <li>First        3. First
   </ol>                             </ol>

   <ol reversed><!--messy-->         <ol reversed><!--spec-->
     <li>First        3. First         <li>Third        3. Third
     <li>Second       2. Second        <li>Second       2. Second
     <li>Third        1. Third         <li>First        1. First
   </ol>                             </ol>

   <ol reverse><!--a proposal-->     <ol reverse><!--messy-->
     <li>First        3. Third         <li>Third        3. First
     <li>Second       2. Second        <li>Second       2. Second
     <li>Third        1. First         <li>First        1. Third
   </ol>                             </ol>