Re: Preceding list function

Subject: Re: Preceding list function
From: Norman Walsh <ndw@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 05 Aug 2000 09:24:54 -0400
/ Oisin McGuinness <oisin@xxxxxxxx> was heard to say:
| It sounds as if your current algorithm is "find the last preceding
| list element, and use the number of listitems it has as the base
| count for this (continuing) list". But once you've found that
| preceding list element , can't you just walk up its ancestors as
| long as they are lists, until you have to stop (perhaps a short
| trip), and then do the count?

It's not that simple. If both the initial list and the continued list
are nested in different list items of a list, then it's not the
furthest ancestor that is being continued.

| It also sounds as if one really should have, in a continuation list,
| some indication of which list it is continuing; semantic error in
| DocBook? Page 345 of your book on DocBook says: "Continues indicates
| that numbering should begin where the preceding list left off." I
| see some ambiguity as to what "preceding list" really means...

No, there's no ambiguity. It's the most recently ended list. If you
imagine looking at the print book, there'd never be any ambiguity.
That said, *my* life would be a lot easier if the element pointed to
the list it was continuing. (But then that would allow wonky things
like continuations of lists with other lists intervening, so I'm not
sure which is better.)

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@xxxxxxxxxx> | It is better to waste one's youth than
http://nwalsh.com/            | to do nothing with it at all.--Georges
                              | Courteline


 DSSSList info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/dsssl/dssslist


Current Thread