[Request] Numbered lists need some love

[David Gifford]

Hi all

To be honest, this is not really a request for my own personal projects. I tend to prefer unordered lists myself. This is a request thinking of new users.

Second and subsequent levels of numbered lists just repeat the arabic numerals.

1.

• 1.

• 1.

I have a feeling this turns people away from using multiple level numbered lists in TiddlyWiki.

Would it be possible for someone to create a plugin so that numbered lists look like this? (no bullets, obviously - the new Google Groups ui seems to have eliminated indenting as a text formatting option.)

1.

• a.
  • i.

Another nice option would be

1.

• 1.1
  • 1.1.1
    

I have no idea if either or both of these are possible. But it would definitely be a welcome improvement, even as a plugin rather than as a core improvement.

Perhaps Saq's Editor-Autolists plugin would be the best candidate to add this kind of functionality? I wonder if that is something he might consider pursuing. Or would this be better as its own plugin?

Thank you all for your consideration. Blessings!

[Saq Imtiaz]

Dave: I believe all you need for this is the appropriate CSS for nested lists.
https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_list-style-type.asp

[Saq Imtiaz]

Also of interest might be counters

https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_counters.asp

[David Gifford]

How sad, all these years I thought this was a limitation of TiddlyWiki. I had no idea there was such an easy fix with CSS. This really needs to be added to the tiddlywiki.com documentation so people are aware of this. I will definitely add it to my "documenting TW" file soon. (https://giffmex.org/gifts/documenting.tw.html)

Thanks for the help, Saq!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/tiddlywiki/ZWwNlhR-9N8/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/ff78cbce-e7db-4e51-8298-c183b4e9d4c9n%40googlegroups.com.

[Saq Imtiaz]

@Dave I think there is a good case for including in TW a class that handles nested numbered lists better.

[springer]

+1 on this sentiment. 

Handling nested ordered lists in the numeric-alpha-roman way Dave suggests is also my preference, and with each wiki project I stumble across the need to reconstruct that css fix (usually at a moment when I really just want to focus on the content).

-Springer

[Saq Imtiaz]

I've posted an issue on Github: https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/issues/5186

[Jean-Pierre Rivière]

It is worth noting that these CSS only numbers/letters will NOT be copied if you select the whole text. It might be problematic. Yet, even without CSS, this is true of the numbers generated by html tags.

But from the accessibility point of view, the text should be the same with or without CSS. This is curious that we have these CSS rules and tricks in the first place, or perhaps is it just an indication that a11y is less equal than other matters...

But for my own point of view, what I'd like to get is an automatic numbering for titles, something that mediawiki does very well, including generating a local TOC. And here, the numbers should be part of the title, albeit in a span of their own to ease CSS tweaking. And this numbering could also give something like 1.3.7.2 or A.3.7.b for an h4 for instance. These title and numbering would perhaps need to be stored in a dictionary. Why? Because, some parts may be relegated to external tiddlers and their numbering be altered during the life of the wiki. But a tiddler needs to keep its title the same as much as can be to avoid problem with linking. For instance if fubar is the tiddler numbered 5.4.7 then in fubar, that numbering could be retrieved from the title name in that dictionary (title->number). A dictionary that could be used in the reverse order would be fine, perhaps a necessity to avoid duplication of information (a great evil!).

[TW Tones]

I understand you concerns about number generated in the display of content and those stored within the tiddlers/data. There are different applications for both, sometimes we want a transient summary of where a list is at a point in time and other where we want such numbers are fundamental properties. Since this subject has many different rabbit holes I would like to assure you based on my own experience all of these can be accommodated in tiddlywiki, although few currently have out of the box solutions.

I have a solution or two that can save/snapshot the css output to a tiddlers, and one can even extract the results of css numbering but this does complicate the logic.

To ask for The same with or without CSS   may overlook these fundamentally different applications. 

I have said many times, based on deep experience, avoid creating compound keys in tiddler titles, It is always best to derive a number or get it from a field than name the tiddler by a number and text combination. 

Any database structure including with referential integrity can be built on top of tiddlywiki to maintain links and references.

Regards

Tones

[Jan]

Hi Dave, Hi all,
 
I think Dave is right. My biggest problem with numbered lists in TW ist that the numbers are so easily broken.
If I insert something else, like a header or a bullet there is no way to pick up the numbering.
Though this should be possible in CSS it would be great to do this natively in TW.

Best wishes Jan

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/74c57951-c36f-4bc5-a16d-e4207960670bn%40googlegroups.com.

[Eric Shulman]

On Saturday, December 5, 2020 at 12:25:55 PM UTC-8 Jan wrote:

If I insert something else, like a header or a bullet there is no way to pick up the numbering.

The trick to preserving the numbering is to wrap the block-mode item content inside a <div>...</div>, like this:

# one

# two

# three<div>

!!header in three

* first bullet in three

* second bullet in three

* third bullet in three

A paragraph within three.

and another paragraph.

</div>

# four

# five

see https://tiddlywiki.com/#Lists%20in%20WikiText (scroll to the bottom for "Paragraphs in Lists")

-e

[TW Tones]

Eric,

Just playing and discovered you can use an arbitrary html element name for this. I made up "break".

#a<break>

!Heading

*x

</break>

#b

Tones

[Jan]

Hi Eric,
thanks for this trick,
now preserving the numbering worked for me.

Best wishes Jan

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/36a5b884-0f0b-4c0e-be55-e5f3790e83bfn%40googlegroups.com.