renumbering a list

[Adam Smith]

Is there a way to renumber a list? I have an <ol> that starts 1, 2, 3, etc. But all the steps are similar, and I don't want to output all 101 elements. Is there a way I can just skip to 101?

Thanks,

Adam

--------------------
Adam A. Smith
Associate Professor of Computer Science
University of Puget Sound

[Andrew Scholer]

Adam - 

I am 99.99% sure there is no mechanism to override the numbering of lists.

There was discussion a while back of breaking an ordered list in the middle, and that is not possible either:
https://groups.google.com/g/pretext-dev/c/W8kXdGw6OXw/m/_UWLoN-LBwAJ?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer

Andrew Scholer (he/him/his)

Computer Science Instructor

Chemeketa Community College

503.589.7649 

computerscience.chemeketa.edu/people/andrew-scholer/

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[Adam Smith]

Thanks for the reply--I appreciate it.

I'm hopeful that this will be revisited in the future.

Adam

--------------------
Adam A. Smith
Associate Professor of Computer Science
University of Puget Sound

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[Rob Beezer]

On 7/15/25 15:41, Adam Smith wrote:
> all the steps are similar, and I don't want to output all 101 elements. Is there
> a way I can just skip to 101?

I'm not following what you are asking for - I can't even connect the subject
line to the quoted sentence (which I don't quite understand all by itself).

> I'm hopeful that this will be revisited in the future.

How about now? ;-) Can you give us a concrete example of what you are after?

Rob

[Adam Smith]

I'm trying to explain 2 algorithms, using the Right Way and the Wrong Way. One way to compare them is to count how many memory allocations they each do. (It would also be advantageous to do this via O-notation, but this is at an earlier place in the book and I haven't covered asymptotic notations yet.)

Under the assumptions I've made, the Wrong Way needs 101 allocations. They're done in strict order, so what I'd really like to do would be to do something like this:

1. explain 1st allocation

2. explain 2nd allocation

3. explain 3rd allocation

 ⋮

101. explain 101st allocation

That is, literally have a vertical ellipsis in the middle, illustrating just how long the list really is (without showing it in all its gory detail).

Whereas the Right Way would have a list like this:

1. explain 1st allocation

2. explain 2nd allocation

...and done.

This would call for a couple of things:

• Being able to change the # of the <ol>, in the middle.
• Replacing one of the numbers with a vertical ellipsis.

Mind you, I've pretty much figured out how to do this with scripts and sed/regexes, so it's not a very high priority. But I do think that this use case is illustrative of something others might do. Granted, I'm quite sure that this could be used to wreck some real havoc, and so I can understand the reluctance. But allowing ordered lists that don't go in exact increasing order has several good uses. I also liked the example given in the discussion last year, with a numbered list that can start and stop, with explanatory paragraphs in between. Being able to change the current number of an <ol> would help there, too. And then it might be useful to make a list of indefinite length, that just ends with a ⋮.

Thanks for considering. :)

A

--------------------
Adam A. Smith
Associate Professor of Computer Science
University of Puget Sound

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[Sean Fitzpatrick]

I think I'd do this with some other mechanism, especially if you want the vertical ellipsis. 

One option (not ideal, maybe):

<me>\begin{matrix}

1\amp \text{First thing}\\

2\amp \text{Second thing}\\

\amp\vdots\\

101\amp\text{Last thing} 

\end{matrix}</me>

Probably bad for accessibility. 

Maybe there is a similar thing with md or cd.

Or you could do 

<ul marker="">

<li><title>1.</title>First thing</li>

Etc. Not sure how to get the vertical ellipsis in that case, though. (I don't think there's a PreTeXt element for that?)

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[Rob Beezer]

Thanks, Adam, for the more complete explanation, and anticipating some of the
gotchas.

We have an #algorithm block, which might be a good home for this. And if any
algorithm-specific enhancements were made, we could condition them on living
inside such a block, which might reduce the "havoc" potential.

I now know more about vertical ellipsis than I ever thought I would (which is
not to say I know a whole lot more).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis

Good news, Unicode U+2026 is the character. So, Adam you could experiment with
HTML and "& # x 2026 ;" (no spaces).

As suggested, I think I would try a #dl where the "title" of one element is
empty (hmmm) or absent (schema violation?) or maybe just holds a <nbsp/> (tag
abuse) and put the Unicode vertical ellipsis in as the text of the lone #p in
the #item.

If we think a vertical ellipsis is useful as a character (like in sentences) it
would be little trouble (except for braille!) to make a #vellipsis, or similar.

Rob

> * Being able to change the # of the <ol>, in the middle.
> * Replacing one of the numbers with a vertical ellipsis.

> <mailto:pretext-support%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.

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[Andrew Scholer]

Slight correction... vertical ellipses is U+22EE

HTML version might be solvable with something like:

https://jsfiddle.net/ascholerChemeketa/uktLd675/4/

Andrew Scholer (he/him/his)

Computer Science Instructor

Chemeketa Community College

503.589.7649 

computerscience.chemeketa.edu/people/andrew-scholer/

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[Rob Beezer]

Right. Moving too fast. Thanks for the correction. And thanks for the
thought-provoking demo.

On 7/17/25 10:45, Andrew Scholer wrote:
> Slight correction... vertical ellipses is U+22EE
>
> HTML version might be solvable with something like:

> https://jsfiddle.net/ascholerChemeketa/uktLd675/4/ <https://jsfiddle.net/
> ascholerChemeketa/uktLd675/4/>

>
> Andrew Scholer (he/him/his)
> Computer Science Instructor
> Chemeketa Community College
> 503.589.7649

> computerscience.chemeketa.edu/people/andrew-scholer/ <http://
> computerscience.chemeketa.edu/people/andrew-scholer/>

>
>
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 10:32 AM 'Rob Beezer' via PreTeXt support <pretext-
> sup...@googlegroups.com <mailto:pretext...@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Adam, for the more complete explanation, and anticipating some of the
> gotchas.
>
> We have an  #algorithm  block, which might be a good home for this.  And if any
> algorithm-specific enhancements were made, we could condition them on living
> inside such a block, which might reduce the "havoc" potential.
>
> I now know more about vertical ellipsis than I ever thought I would (which is
> not to say I know a whole lot more).
>

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis>

> > sup...@googlegroups.com <mailto:sup...@googlegroups.com>
> <mailto:pretext...@googlegroups.com <mailto:pretext-

> sup...@googlegroups.com>>> wrote:
> >
> >         On 7/15/25 15:41, Adam Smith wrote:
> >          > all the steps are similar, and I don't want to output all 101
> >         elements. Is there
> >          > a way I can just skip to 101?
> >         I'm not following what you are asking for - I can't even connect the
> >         subject
> >         line to the quoted sentence (which I don't quite understand all
> by itself).
> >
> >           > I'm hopeful that this will be revisited in the future.
> >
> >         How about now?  ;-)  Can you give us a concrete example of what
> you are
> >         after?
> >
> >         Rob
> >
> >
> >         --
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[Adam Smith]

The vertical ellipses is actually quite easy. I have my keyboard set up to do all kinds of wacky characters, and PreTeXt has been amazingly robust whenever I enter something strange. So if I just put a ⋮ in my code, it seems to work fine.

I did play with the <dl> a bit, but it just looked different from the other lists I had (different fonts and different spacing), so I decided that that probably wasn't the option.

A

--------------------
Adam A. Smith
Associate Professor of Computer Science
University of Puget Sound

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[Rob Beezer]

On 7/17/25 11:10, Adam Smith wrote:
> The vertical ellipses is actually quite easy. I have my keyboard set up to do
> all kinds of wacky characters, and PreTeXt has been amazingly robust whenever I
> enter something strange. So if I just put a ⋮ in my code, it seems to work fine.

LaTeX will need xelatex (not pdflatex) to handle Unicode.

Braille will fail miserably and totally bewilder the reader.

Rob

[Adam Smith]

In that case, I'd like to request that a vertical ellipsis gets some support--it's just too useful.

I just wrote a script to count the irregular, non-ASCII characters that I use. There are a few, that I'll have to revisit, when it’s time to worry about accessibility. Is there a list somewhere of the supported characters?

A

--------------------
Adam A. Smith
Associate Professor of Computer Science
University of Puget Sound

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[Rob Beezer]

You want

Subsection 4.1.4: Characters in Paragraphs
https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/topic-paragraphs.html#topic-character-elements

*Horizonatl* ellipsis is about 60% of the way down. But don't skip the
philosophy, attitude, and ranting that is interspersed. ;-)

Rob

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[Peter Seibel]

Here's a gross/elegant (your pick) CSS hack to do it without changing the HTML.

https://jsfiddle.net/j4u8om3f/

[Adam Smith]

That's interesting--thank you.

A

--------------------
Adam A. Smith
Associate Professor of Computer Science
University of Puget Sound

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