[whatwg] Reverse ordered lists

[Philip Parker]

What about having it render as a standard unordered list ( ie, 
bulletpoints ) until the entire set of items has been received - and 
then re-rendering the list as a numbered type, all properly calculated

James Graham wrote:
> Siemova wrote:
>> On Jan 23, 2008 10:54 AM, David Walbert <dwalbert at learnnc.org 
>> <mailto:dwalbert at learnnc.org>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     It's not that simple -- the last line should be
>>
>>     start = 1 + ( (number of items - 1) * step)
>>
>>     if it's assumed that the last item of the list is numbered one by
>>     default.
>>
>>
>> Alas, we see the ill effects of my hastiness today! I stand happily 
>> corrected. In that case, it's even simpler:
>>
>> if start is not specified
>> start = 1
>> if reverse
>> start += (number of items - 1) * step
>
> The problem that Jonas originally pointed out is that, given browsers 
> do incremental rendering "number of items" is not a known quantity 
> when the list is first rendered. For a pathological example of why 
> this is a problem, imagine a cgi script that just kept spewing out 
> reverse numbered list items, one per second, indefinitely.
>
> It may be that in practice lists are short enough that they are 
> typically rendered all in one go so this wouldn't be a problem. I 
> don't think that's obvious, however.
>
>
>