[whatwg] Reverse ordered lists

[Sam Arthur Allen]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:03:42 +0100
Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt at lachy.id.au> wrote:

> Simon Pieters wrote:
> >    <ol start="100" reverse>
> > 
> > The lack of start='' would make the numbers update as the list is
> > filled with <li>s. This allows both for simplicitly for short lists
> > and correct incremental rendering for large lists.
> 
> No, the lack of an explicit start attribute would make it start from
> the default value: 1.  It would then count down from there:
> 
>   1. A
>   0. B
> -1. C
> -2. D
> 

Actually, the best route I can see is to not have a start attribute at
all but to rely on the browser to automatically detect the amount of
<li> tags within an
<ol reverse> container and decrement from there. ie:

   <ol reverse>   <-- Start count from here.
      <li>Red</li>
      <li>Orange</li>
      <li>Yellow</li>
      <li>Green</li>
      <li>Blue</li>
   </ol>   <-- Close tag detected, 5 <li> tags counted.

is rendered as starting from 5:

    5. Red
    4. Orange
    ...etc...

and using a "step" value, for example, all the browser would need to do
is multiply the total at the </ol> tag, and decrement that
multiplied total by the "step" amount, making:

   <ol reverse step="5">

render the list as:

  25. Red
  20. Orange
  15. Yellow
  ...etc...

It might mean more work for the browsers, but by experience something
like this isn't too hard to implement.