Posted by Ed Mullen on 02/02/07 02:12

dorayme wrote:
> In article <g%uwh.1898$fS2.53@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi>,
> "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
>
>> The best workaround is to put the numbers into the item contents and to use
>> <ul> without bullets.
>
> Indeed, it looks a reasonable solution.
>
>> (<ul> is illogical,...
>
> Whether it is quite illogical or not depends on the details of
> how to interpret the notion of ol and ul. How to interpret the
> use of it in any particular context. I say it is not a simple
> matter.
>
> Presumably the ideal of an ordered list is one where the order
> matters greatly as in an algorithm.
>
> Presumably an unordered list is one where the order does not
> matter greatly in terms of the meaning as in a shopping list
> given to the husband by a wife who expects it to be completely
> implemented without any excuses!
>
> But these are ideals that do not quite fit many real life
> situations.
>
> The team for today is... All boys must ensure the correct
> numbered football shirt....
>
> might be ordered by shirt number or surname or not at all. In
> fact, there is a choice and the ultimate usefulness of the
> information is independent of the ordering or non ordering. Each
> boy must see the number for himself and get the right shirt. It
> may assist the boys to order the list. How far this assistance
> has a semantic import seems to me not to be like the case of the
> algorithm or the ordering of a DNA sequence or other things where
> order is crucial.
>
> In an unordered list, no item has to be where it is, if it were
> elsewhere, no one would misunderstand anything.
>
> But unordered lists are inescapably ordered in time or position,
> there is a first... and last item. It could be different and it
> might not matter, but there is some de facto ordering by the list
> maker. The purpose of an ordered list might be to give a handle
> to readers who wish to refer to one item conveniently. In a way
> it does not matter what order is given as long as some order is
> and for a purpose other than to give meaning. This could well be
> accomplished by an unordered list with markers inside the list
> item, numbers or whatever.
>
> I will stop babbling now, but I don't think your suggestion is so
> clearly illogical. We would need to know more about the context
> in which the OP is using it. I was a little dismayed that you
> left out your usual good advice about the importance of
> supplying a url.
>

Fascinating, and hardly babbling. Frankly, I've never understood the
concepts of HTML "ordered" and "unordered" lists. Who the heck thought
that up? I think the presumptions you cited are silly, although the
logic is impeccable considering the standard.

I prefer to think of them as "numbered" and "un-numbered." In business
communications, certainly, part of the success of a presentation is the
content and part is the appearance. Order is important whether the list
is numbered or not. I most definitely DO care how each point flows into
the next regardless of annotation style. I prefer bullets rather than
numbers as a presentation style in most cases (and most business
presentations are done that way), unless there is a need later in a
document to refer upwards as in: "Referring to number 6 above ..."

And, BTW, I've just added "dorayme" to my SeaMonkey dictionary as the
spell checker keeps suggesting that I change it to "deodorant." I just
couldn't stand the indignity anymore. I will say that one of the other
options in the list was "adorable." That's not bad! ;-)

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

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