[whatwg] Reverse ordered lists

[Simon Pieters]

See: http://forums.whatwg.org/viewtopic.php?t=130

Siemova wrote:
> I recently wanted to create an OL in reverse order. In scouring the web  
> for a solution, I found no simple way to accomplish this, but came  
> across a number of other people frustrated by the lack of this minor  
> feature.
> The easiest, most obvious solution would be to create an attribute for  
> Ordered Lists -- let's call it order="" -- which would have two possible  
> values: ftl (first to last) and ltf (last to first). Very much like the  
> dir property for text, and, similarly, it would default/degrade to the  
> normal first-to-last order.
> The possible applications for this are numerous, of course: count-downs,  
> top n lists, having "most recent" items at the top of a reverse-numbered  
> list, etc. I'm sure anybody can think of times they'd want to do this.  
> It would be particularly helpful for traditional print (newspapers,  
> magazines, etc.) converting their content for internet use. Yes, you can  
> accomplish such things via overloaded tables or CSS hacks, or avoid  
> using an HTML list at all, but my proposal would make this use of lists  
> much more convenient, more standardized, and less likely to break.
>

(A boolean reverse="" attribute or so would also work, I guess.)

Siemova then kindly provided some useful pointers:

People who are frustrated due to the lack of this feature:

http://www.escapedthoughts.com/weblog/geek/P040710badspecs.writeback
http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2003/07/02/prerequisites/
http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2004/05/31/most-naturally-beautiful-women/
http://www.mail-archive.com/pcworks@imagicomm.com/msg07788.html
http://forums.biorust.com/html-php-asp-js/5888-reverse-ordered-lists.html
http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11767/why-not
http://www.spudart.org/blogs/randomthoughts_comments/P2440_0_3_0/
http://samablog.robsama.com/?m=20070421

Pages that work around the lack of this feature:

http://monkey.paularms.com/weblog/html/reverse-ordered-lists
http://archivist.incutio.com/viewlist/css-discuss/18706
http://www.dominoguru.com/pages/06252007031226.html
http://tallerthanaveragetales.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-of-business-from-last-year.html

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software