So the other day while working on a bit of HTML I needed the semantics of an ordered list but the greater style possibilities of an unordered list without introducing scripting. Ultimately, I worked out a work around but it got me thinking about how the web is about letting anyone publish a document and how it seemed CSS as it currently stands occasionally restricts unnecessarily the creative freedoms the web was created to encourage.
Meditating on the issue the obvious solution seemed to be a generic way to define a list style type and then have the author or generator include the appropriate definition in the stylesheet. However, since I [mistakenly] believed the CSS 3 standard to be closer to at least 'proposed recommendation' status than it actually is, based foolishly on the rash of CSS 3 books recently published or in pre-pub, I proposed a solution that I thought might be easier to get included at such a stage.
Doing a little digging I found that proposed additions and changes were submitted via the www-style mailing list. I could not find an up-to-date draft of the CSS 3 standard, so I assumed the latest documents were restricted to W3C members, in order to keep too many cooks from spoiling the meal, so to speak, and continued with proposal for the less elegant solution.
Shortly after submitting my proposal I received a reply from one of the editors that they were presently editing the list module of the standard and already introduced the more elegant solution: @list-style-type as a generic way to define list style types and one that went beyond my use cases. Excellent!
I can hardly wait for a near finished CSS 3 to begin getting implemented!
