[whatwg] Reverse ordered lists

[Sam Arthur Allen]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:18:56 +0100
"Simon Pieters" <simonp at opera.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:54:23 +0100, Siemova <siemova at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
> >> 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.  
> 
> Not a valid reason to ban negative numbers, IMHO.  

On the contrary, I have found that working with people that use a
different locale occasionally frustrating. When I copy text from a
document that uses a different numbering system, I'm frequently
reformatting its text, making work unproductive and time-consuming.

For that reason, I constantly try to avoid negative numbers wherever it
is unnecessary.