[whatwg] <ol reversed> with start value and "underflow"

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Tue Dec 13 13:31:27 PST 2011


On Tue, 13 Dec 2011, Alexis Menard wrote:
> 
> Well it doesn't clearly say it but if I quote :
> 
> "The reversed attribute is a boolean attribute. If present, it
> indicates that the list is a descending list (..., 3, 2, 1). If the
> attribute is omitted, the list is an ascending list (1, 2, 3, ...)."
> 
> Maybe we should replace "indicates that the list is a descending list
> (..., 3, 2, 1)" by "indicates that the list is a descending list (...,
> 3, 2, 1, 0, -1,...).
> 
> That was *for me* the confusing part but maybe it is just me.

I recommend reading this section again:

   http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/introduction.html#how-to-read-this-specification

In particular, note that the paragraph you quote doesn't include any 
"MUST" statements. The first sentence references a definition that gives 
an authoring conformance criteria. The second sentence doesn't say 
anything normative at all; it just describes the meaning of the attribute.

The spec tries to be very explicit about stuff. You should never have to 
read between the lines.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'



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