Numbered lists broken by other styles in between

[avi10000]

I remember now what I didn't like about the built-in editor. It's the numbered lists that freaked me out. (But I think that's a CSS issue anyway.)

When I put a "continue" style in between numbered list items, the next one would always restart at 1. In tech writing we do lots of numbered lists, with lots of interruptions. I had become rusty at HTML, and didn't have the time to re-learn at that time. (Also, all the clicking and entering the Styles dlg box was getting on my nerves.) So I went to look for something else.

I looked for "solutions" and found all sorts of weird ideas. There is a thread on this list named "Styles & Numbering", initiated by a certain person called ianxley, that concludes that it can't be done elegantly.

Maybe I am just dumb, but my solution would be to just remove the </ol> of the previous sequence of numbered list items and remove the <ol> of the next sequence of numbered list items, and you get your continuous numbering. (Often your "sequence" contains only one list item before another style "breaks" the sequence, typically a continue-type style.) I know that you then have all your other elements, e.g. <p>, inside the list, but so far so good for me. Would this solution cause problems?

Any other solutions for this?

Also isn’t this a CSS issue and not really so much a RoboHelp issue?

Tnx,

Avi

[NL_Derek-GsBV5a]

Hi Avi,

I have also encountered this problem, and also tried removing the </ol> and <ol> tags. Basically it works, but paragraphs "inside" the <ol> will be indented. This is not too bad with <p>, but if you have <h2> or <h3> it does disturb the layout, especially if they are visible on the same screen as <h2> or <h3> "outside" the <ol>.

My conclusion is that it creates more problems than it solves, so I use "Bullets and Numbering" > "Restart numbering at".

It seems to be indeed a CSS/HTML rather than a RoboHelp issue.

--- Derek

[avi10000]

>> My conclusion is that it creates more problems than it solves, so I use "Bullets and Numbering" > "Restart numbering at".
There are two problems with using this solution:

1. If you add a list item earlier on then you will have to go back and manually update the "Restart numbering at" every time you used it.
2. The HTML/CSS code generated by using "Restart numbering at" is:

<ol start=n>

where n is the number that the list item is supposed to be continuing with.

However, would you believe it, the "start" HTML attribute has been deprecated (=officially removed) in the latest version(s) of CSS.

Ha Ha Ha :-)

Let's face it, CSS wasn't designed for anybody doing serious writing!

Actually there is an official solution. See: the CSS dfn. at http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/generate.html#q10 (12.5 Automatic counters and numbering).

It's quite complex.

Actually, all the CSS sages needed to do was to have the following HTML attribute setting:

<ol start=continue>

but alas, they had to make everything complicated.

(My client/boss just told me: don't spend too much time on this CSS stuff…).

That statement, "don't spend too much time on this…" always drives me mad. Well if app designers and programmers had more brains then I wouldn't have to, would I …?

Regards,

- Avi

[avi10000]

And thanks for the response , Derek.

Hi.

Actually, I think it would be easier and cleaner to take out the separating <ol> tags and give more thought to what to do if you want "Body Text" in the middle of a list. Since the unwanted indentation is being caused by default inheritance enabled, there is probably an CSS setting like:

inherit=false

and that should deal with the indentation.

Actually, maybe the sages at a CSS forum like http://w3schools.invisionzone.com/ should be able to help out.

- Avi