Bold numbers in ordered lists

[Andreas Prilop]

To get bold numbers in ordered lists, one can write

ol { font-weight: bold }
ol span { font-weight: normal }

<ol>
<li><span>..... .</span></li>
<li><span>..... .</span></li>
</ol>

Is there a better way?

--
In memoriam Alan J. Flavell
http://groups.google.com/groups/sear...Alan.J.Flavell

[dorayme]

In article <8a************ **************@ NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

dorayme wrote:

In article <a9************ **************@ NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

dorayme wrote:
In article <ba************ *************** @NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

dorayme wrote:

I will answer your post later. Obviously, I am not going to get you to
see what I mean by semantic equivalence between an ordered list and a 2
col table easily, you putting up every kind of block from seeing what is
essentially a simple observation of mine.

Maybe because they are semantically different might have something to do
with it.

You forget to add:

"and this is glaringly obvious to everyone but you (dorayme)".

Here's a possibility that understandably escapes your mention: that you
(and many others) are operating with an essentially false or
dilettantish idea of what it is for two things to mean the same.

I will think of a way to take you through my thoughts as best as I can,
the previous clearly not having done the job.

--
dorayme

[Ben C]

On 2008-08-26, dorayme <do************ @optusnet.com.a uwrote:
[...]

Quite often, in my experience, if an idea is so coldly received, it is
because it is communicated in a form that makes it sound simply false or
crazy, there being no handle for the receiver to intelligently discuss
it. Hence your first dismissive response where you repeated so
innocently that a list was a list, one thing after another and a table
was a table, things relating blah blah. I do not blame you.

[...]

I think it's sort of OK to call an ordered list a kind of table. But
it's only possible to judge it in the very dim light available.

A table is really a visual thing as everyone knows. Then people started
saying you can only use an HTML table for abstract "tabular data". But
we can only imagine what "tabular data" really is.

People have their own definitions but none of them are authoritative.

Really it comes down to choosing the element that fits best out of the
choice available.

Since there is an OL element that's usually going to be a better choice
for an ordered list than a TABLE.

And if you do use a TABLE instead because it's easier to style it the
way you want you could be accused of using tables for presentation,
which is the dreaded thing everyone is trying to avoid.

It's much easier to answer the practical questions "why are you using a
table?" and "why aren't you using an OL?" than "is your data tabular?".

Your argument that the numbers are like a corresponding column so that
we can look up the third thing to do on the list etc. does work but how
is that different from the argument that a linter is a kind of
validator?

[Jonathan N. Little]

dorayme wrote:

In article <a9************ **************@ NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

>dorayme wrote:

>>In article <ba************ *************** @NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

dorayme wrote:

Whether you use an ordered list or a table, you are conveying more or
less the same thing.
No not really. A list is a list, with a singular "linear" relationship:
start a 1, then to 2 then to 3...

Not really. The relationship between the number of an ordered list item
and the list item itself is one relationship you miss considering.

I would argue that the ordinal numbers is a list are not at all the same
as the data within a table. It is not really the "data" makes little
difference if

1. fee
2. fie
3. foe
4. fum

A) fee
B) fie
C) foe
D) fum

or implied:

* fee
* fie
* foe
* fum

Where as the first column of a table's data is relevant and the
relationship by row and column is significant.

fin | fish | water
foot | dog | land
wing | bird | air

With or without ordinal numbers a tabular data within has a significance
with respect to row column position. It is that organizational
relationship that differentiates it from a list.

OK, now, Jonathan where were we? O yes, you think the number in an
ordered list can never be the same as data in a column in a table? And
you have an argument. Your argument begins with a few particularly
distracting ungrammatical sentences and others later. I am having
trouble understanding you. I have spent 15 minutes thinking of
charitable interpretations and come up with only obviously acceptable
and uncontroversial things that I start with myself.

Sorry should get someone else to proof my messages before posting.
Numbers in a list are only significant if they represent procedural
step, but that may not aways be the case. See my other reply...

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

[dorayme]

In article <98************ *************** @NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

Numbers in a list are only significant if they represent procedural
step, but that may not aways be the case.

This is either false or ambiguous or both.

--
dorayme

[Jonathan N. Little]

dorayme wrote:

In article <98************ *************** @NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

>Numbers in a list are only significant if they represent procedural
step, but that may not aways be the case.

This is either false or ambiguous or both.

How so?

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

[dorayme]

In article <f1************ *************** @NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

dorayme wrote:

In article <98************ *************** @NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

Numbers in a list are only significant if they represent procedural
step, but that may not aways be the case.

This is either false or ambiguous or both.

I forgot to add "or vague" and change "or both" to "or all three"

How so?

The "that" could refer to either the fact of significance or the
canvassing of the possibility of the conditional not being true.

The vaguesness refers to the possibility of some other meaning that is
not clear and is neither of the ones mentioned above.

And the falsity refers to there being cases of ordered lists that do not
literally represent a procedure to be followed.

--
dorayme

[dorayme]

In article <do************ *************** *******@web.aio e.org>,
dorayme <do************ @optusnet.com.a uwrote:

The crucial case is between r and q (see discussion with Ben). I claim
they are not *significantly* different and if they are what is the
difference?

O and I should have added "and if there is a difference, what is its
true significance".

--
dorayme

[Jonathan N. Little]

dorayme wrote:

In article <do************ *************** *******@web.aio e.org>,
dorayme <do************ @optusnet.com.a uwrote:

>The crucial case is between r and q (see discussion with Ben). I claim
they are not *significantly* different and if they are what is the
difference?

O and I should have added "and if there is a difference, what is its
true significance".

Not sure how to explain it any more clearly, but essentially list data
is *linear* or *sequential* whereas tabular data is "2-dimensional" with
a positional relationship in rows and columns. If you cannot grasp the
concept I am afraid you are doom to confusion ;-)

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

[dorayme]

In article <48************ *************** @NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" <lw*****@centra l.netwrote:

dorayme wrote:

In article <do************ *************** *******@web.aio e.org>,
dorayme <do************ @optusnet.com.a uwrote:

The crucial case is between r and q (see discussion with Ben). I claim
they are not *significantly* different and if they are what is the
difference?

O and I should have added "and if there is a difference, what is its
true significance".

Not sure how to explain it any more clearly, but essentially list data
is *linear* or *sequential* whereas tabular data is "2-dimensional" with
a positional relationship in rows and columns. If you cannot grasp the
concept I am afraid you are doom to confusion ;-)

The insinuation that you know something about this matter that I don't
would be more impressive if you showed the slightest explained agreement
with any of the detailed things I have said. This would show how far
along what road you travel with me and exactly the point at which you
diverge.

Your suggestion that I am doomed if I don't grasp what satisfies you and
others should be beneath you.

In any case, your analysis of what is dooming me is clearly wrong
because I accept that cells in a well made html table have a
relationship to each other across rows and sometimes across columns and
sometimes across both. I also accept that list data items are
sequential.

You continue to ignore the crucial and relevant matters and keep
repeating the simple simon met a pieman stuff which I start with rather
than dispute. Anyway, thanks for trying to contribute to the discussion.

--
dorayme

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Jonathan N. Little wrote:

Not sure how to explain it any more clearly, but essentially list data
is *linear* or *sequential* whereas tabular data is "2-dimensional"
with a positional relationship in rows and columns. If you cannot
grasp the concept I am afraid you are doom to confusion ;-)

Tabular data is, generally speaking, n-dimensional, though in web authoring
and styling we are mainly interested in the cases n = 1 and n = 2. For n =
1, tabular data reduces to a list (linear, sequential structure), which can
be described within the HTML table concept as a table (n = 2) with one
column only, or with one row only. A list can, of course, also be presented
using <ulor <ol(or <diror <menuto get pointlessly wild) or even just
a sequence of elements, like <divelements or <pelements. In practice,
people tend to select the markup on presentational grounds rather than
anything else. If you want bullets, you use <ul>, etc., even though you
_could_, in theory at least, use any of the markup approaches on some
logical or other grounds and then use CSS for styling.

The suggestion to use a table for bolding numbers of list items means that a
list is replaced by a 2-dimensional table, with numbers in one column and
list items in another. I don't see why this would be unsound, even though
it's in practice a workaround when one just wants a list with bold numbers.
After all, the more importance the numbers have - i.e. the more they
describe essential properties of the data, as opposite to being merely
running numbers that could be replaced e.g. by a, b, c, ... or even by
bullets - the more we can argue that they _should_ be explicit, present in
the actual data, and not just generated by presentational tools like CSS.

By the way, the case n = 3 is something that could be presented using CSS,
in a sense. You could have a collection of similar tables, positioned at the
same place, with different z-index values. This would of course mean that
only one "slice" would be visible at any given time, and switching between
"slices" would have to be handled outside CSS. (Well, :hover could be used
to switch between _two_ slices on mouseover.)

Yucca