[whatwg] Reverse ordered lists

[Sam Arthur Allen]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:54:23 -0600
Siemova <siemova at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 23, 2008 9:32 AM, Sam Arthur Allen <dev at atshop3d.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:07:02 -0600
> > Siemova <siemova at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > But then what would someone do in order to begin a list but not
> > > end it? For instance, if they wanted to say:
> > >
> > > "10. Blah
> > > 9. Blah
> > > 8. Blah
> > >
> > > And so forth..."
> >
> > Then in this situation, a start value would be necessary.
> >
> 
> 
> You're right! My apologies for misreading. Earlier I thought for a
> moment you were advocating having no start attribute at all.
> *sheepish grin*

That's ok, I should have made myself clear from the start.

> > Personally, I don't see any problem with allowing list items to be
> > > numbered 0 or negatively, so I think the "1, 0, -1, -2" default
> > > approach would work fine.
> >
> > I can only disagree with using negative numbers in a reverse order
> > list, since I communicate to many people in non-english countries
> > that use brackets to display negative numbers in their locale. So a
> > list would appear as:
> >
> >    1 : Red
> >    0 : Green
> >   (1): Blue
> >   (2): Violet
> >   (3): ...etc...
> >
> > and if a long list is printed out on paper, all anybody would see
> > is:
> >
> >  (120): Insert a really long paragraph of text here.
> >         ...
> >  (121): And one here too
> >         ...
> >
> > which, to someone outside of their locale, would appear confusing.
> >
> 
> 
> Aha. Well, your intended audience will understand anyway, right? And
> if any other reader looks at the beginning of the list, or is
> familiar with the context (surely the author would explain the list
> in some fashion), they'll know what's going on. Is that scenario
> really dire enough to prevent negative numbering, particularly given
> how troublesome and unintuitive it might be to figure out how to
> number items that should be negative but aren't allowed to display
> that way?

It's difficult to say, since I can't give any real world situations
where a decremental list has been used with negative numbers.

However, I've talked to quite Indonesians who use brackets for
numbering. Australia has approximately 20,000,000 people, where
Indonesia has around 234,500,000. In Australia, it's a fact that 1 out
of 3 families have access to the internet -- in Indonesia, it's more
like 9 out of 10. Simply put, Indonesians outnumber Australians
when it comes to reading websites. Asian countries are technologically
advanced in areas like that.

And that's just one situation. With the advent of OLPC and the likes,
we'll be seeing more non-english cultures accessing the internet,
especially African and Middle-East countries where their numbering
system is exotic when compared to our own.