Non-list items in lists

Imagine a long nested list of items, or a long definition list, prefaced
with an index to that list.

To make it easier to use, you might want to put a link to "List index"
at various points in the list, perhaps at each major group in the list:

List of members by birth date

1990 Back to list index
* Joe Bob
* Bobo
* Dede Wilkes
1991 Back to list index
...
1992 Back to list index
...

Where to put this link? It's not itself a list item, and it's certainly
not part of a definition term, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere
else suitable.

If these links go into list items, then anything parsing the list will
find items called things like "1990 (Back to list index)".

Daniele

On 12 Oct, 09:31, real-not-anti-spam-addr... (AT) apple-juice (DOT) co.uk (D.M.
Procida) wrote:

Imagine a long nested list of items, or a long definition list, prefaced
with an index to that list.

To make it easier to use, you might want to put a link to "List index"
at various points in the list, perhaps at each major group in the list:

Where to put this link?

Simple: Inside <li class="foo" >, because that's all you have to work
with as a permissible element at that location. The alternative is to
split the list container <ul> into multiples, which isn't great.

Yes, you now have two classes of <li> element within the same list.
Get over it and deal with it, because it's HTML and that's just all
you've got to work with.

There's also the question of whether to mark the content of the <li>
up as either minimal markup to support formatting

<li class="list-index-item" ><span class="foo-1" >1990</span> <span
class="foo-2" >Back to list index</span></li>

or else to use something more structure-based (this is just a starter
for this simple example)
<li class="list-index-item" ><h3>1990</h3> <div>Back to list index</
div></li>

Remember that the content model inside <li> is %flow;, so you can go
wild in there. Although there's a general reluctance to put anything
more than a bare string inside <li>, this is a false constraint and
there's no reason to limit yourself.


BTW - Are you involved with the forthcoming Dorkbot @ Chapter?

Andy Dingley <dingbat (AT) codesmiths (DOT) com> wrote:

Imagine a long nested list of items, or a long definition list, prefaced
with an index to that list.

To make it easier to use, you might want to put a link to "List index"
at various points in the list, perhaps at each major group in the list:

Where to put this link?

Simple: Inside <li class="foo" >, because that's all you have to work
with as a permissible element at that location.

Yes, you now have two classes of <li> element within the same list.
Get over it and deal with it, because it's HTML and that's just all
you've got to work with.

Indeed. I find myself increasingly frustrated by the number of things I
need to get over and deal with because of limitations within HTML.

Remember that the content model inside <li> is %flow;, so you can go
wild in there. Although there's a general reluctance to put anything
more than a bare string inside <li>, this is a false constraint and
there's no reason to limit yourself.

Yes - though that wouldn't work if you were dealing with a <dt>, if
that's the place where it would be sensible to display your non-list
item.

BTW - Are you involved with the forthcoming Dorkbot @ Chapter?

Do you mean <http://www.chapter.org/17160.html>? Thanks, I wasn't even
aware of it until just now - I shall definitely pay a visit.

Daniele

In article
<068f889f-7975-402f-86d2-6ea9a54884fc (AT) a21g2000yqc (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
Andy Dingley <dingbat (AT) codesmiths (DOT) com> wrote:

On 12 Oct, 09:31, real-not-anti-spam-addr... (AT) apple-juice (DOT) co.uk (D.M.
Procida) wrote:
Imagine a long nested list of items, or a long definition list, prefaced
with an index to that list.

To make it easier to use, you might want to put a link to "List index"
at various points in the list, perhaps at each major group in the list:

Where to put this link?

Simple: Inside <li class="foo" >, because that's all you have to work
with as a permissible element at that location. The alternative is to
split the list container <ul> into multiples, which isn't great.

Simple alright! Trouble is it is desperate, unsemantic and unnecessarily
defeatist.

OP wants to make a list. He wants it to be a nice usable list. He wants
users to be able to understand and negotiate it. It does not matter if
he or a thousand others are fixated on all this being possible within in
a list. It cannot be done with *just* a list (no matter with classes)
and it is the wrong tool for the job.

An HTML table of data is a way to organise lists, links to indexes are
quite the sort of data that might appropriately go into a column and
relate to groups of rows.

--
dorayme

On 12 Oct, 10:58, real-not-anti-spam-addr... (AT) apple-juice (DOT) co.uk (D.M.
Procida) wrote:

Indeed. I find myself increasingly frustrated by the number of things I
need to get over and deal with because of limitations within HTML.

HTML does "text content for web pages". It doesn't do structured
documents. If you must have those, there's DocBook or DITA. If you're
stuck in a HTML world like the web, then that's the situation and we
have to deal with it.

Progress beyond this would seem to depend on XML (as XML),
namespacing, and toasting marshmallows over the heat of a roaring
Arjun 8-)

D.M. Procida wrote:

Imagine a long nested list of items, or a long definition list,
prefaced with an index to that list.

I imagine that a long list, especially one that needs an index, is split
across several web pages. The problem vanishes in a puff of logic.

Okay, you might still wish to have, as one version of some material, a long
list on one page e.g. because it's something that someone might want to
print or save locally in a comfortable way. Fine. So make it one list and
don't try to make it any more usable, as the usable way (for most purposes)
is to divide it into several pages.

To make it easier to use, you might want to put a link to "List index"
at various points in the list,

It doesn't make it any more easier, just as "Back to top" links are worse to
useless, as explained at
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/totop.html

Where to put this link? It's not itself a list item, and it's
certainly not part of a definition term, but there doesn't seem to be
anywhere else suitable.

That's logical, since it's not a logical, structural part of the list but an
attempt to create possibilities for actions - to do very primitive
resemblance of programming.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> wrote:

I imagine that a long list, especially one that needs an index, is split
across several web pages. The problem vanishes in a puff of logic.

Okay, you might still wish to have, as one version of some material, a long
list on one page e.g. because it's something that someone might want to
print or save locally in a comfortable way. Fine. So make it one list and
don't try to make it any more usable, as the usable way (for most purposes)
is to divide it into several pages.

It's a long list of academic publications (in the humanities, you get to
have a paper to your name if you sat in your freezing garret writing it.
In medicine, you get tou have your name on it if the work was done in
your lab, by your students, by your researchers, by your colleague who
owed you a favour, by your best friend, by the guy down the hall whom
you spotted coming out of a restaurant with a woman who wasn't his wife,
and possibly, if you managed to slip into the research office and scrawl
your name on the folder).

Anyway, it's a long list, and for various reasons, not one I think would
usefully be split up.

To make it easier to use, you might want to put a link to "List index"
at various points in the list,

It doesn't make it any more easier, just as "Back to top" links are worse to
useless, as explained at
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/totop.html

I think some of those are really important, but I think you need to
distinguish between:

* "back to top" (or worse, "^" etc)
* non-list content such as "Index" links in lists

because they present different issues.

Daniele

On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:59:39 +0100,
real-not-anti-spam-address (AT) apple-juice (DOT) co.uk (D.M. Procida) wrote:

Anyway, it's a long list, and for various reasons, not one I think would
usefully be split up.

I must admit that my first thought was, how useful is such a list?

I'd be looking at putting the data in a database and delivering it to
the user as they require, sorted by some query.
--
Geoff Berrow (Put thecat out to email)
It's only Usenet, no one dies.
My opinions, not the committee's, mine.
Simple RFDs www.ckdog.co.uk/rfdmaker

D.M. Procida wrote:

It's a long list of academic publications
[...]
Anyway, it's a long list, and for various reasons, not one I think
would usefully be split up.

I think you're saying it's a write-only list that just "needs" to be there,
and nobody is really expected to use it for anything, except to find errors,
perhaps. If it were meant to be useful, it would - on the Web - be turned
into a simple (or non-simple) data base so that people could make various
queries and quickly get the info they are looking for

[...] I think you need to
distinguish between:

* "back to top" (or worse, "^" etc)
* non-list content such as "Index" links in lists

because they present different issues.

I don't think they are that different. The latter does to a list what "back
to top" does to a page.

If it's a long list (that needs an index etc.), then there should hardly be
any other content on the page, so the "Index" link would really go to the
start of the page.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Geoff Berrow <blthecat (AT) ckdog (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

On Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:59:39 +0100,
real-not-anti-spam-address (AT) apple-juice (DOT) co.uk (D.M. Procida) wrote:

Anyway, it's a long list, and for various reasons, not one I think would
usefully be split up.

I must admit that my first thought was, how useful is such a list?

I'd be looking at putting the data in a database and delivering it to
the user as they require, sorted by some query.

It is being pulled from a database, sorted by kind, then by date (and
grouped by year).

Another view offers "Selected key publications" - the academic's chosen
top eight items.

Later we can get as clever as we like with this information, but while
other views of the same data may turn out to be useful for numerous
other particlar purposes, the long complete list is still required, and
for the time being, will be the definitive view.

Daniele