On ordered Lists (was RE: [Doc-SIG] Formalizing ST)

[Peter Funk]

Hi,

Guido van Rossum:
[...about writing ordered lists in plain text style...]
> Or my preference:
> 
>     Some text.
> 
>     1. This is a list item
>        continued here.
> 
>     2. This is the second item.

What do people (and Guido?) think of the following style for ordered 
lists?  I've seen this used in EMail and News quite often:

      Some text.
      (1) This is a ordered list item
          continued here.
      (2) This is the second item.
      (3) Items may consist of several
          paragraphs.

	  As long as the paragraphs keep 
	  proper indentation.

      This is text following the list.

Of course this would require, that indentation plays an important role
in an upcoming text structure grammar.  The parser should always fall
back into literal (aka preformatted) paragraph mode on any material,
which violates the rather strict grammar rules.

Only text paragraphs which are properly (equally) indented plain text
and contain no hyphens at the end of lines, should be allowed for 
reformatting in propotional fonts and with new line breaks.

  I disagree in this respect with Tony and may be others in this SIG.
Allowing free form paragraphs like this one here for reformatting
 is simply to dangerous.  Mandating the rule, that normal text paragraphs
  must be aligned on the left side seems to be a very reasonable
  restriction to me.  Otherwise they should come out in fixed font
 and people will see what they are used to before the advent of clever
Text structure recognition tools.
  
The IMO disclaimer applies here as well.  It was not my intention "to 
throw oars into Tonys and Edwards work.

Best regards, Peter
-- 
Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, D-27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Fax:+49 4222950260
office: +49 421 20419-0 (ArtCom GmbH, Grazer Str.8, D-28359 Bremen, Germany)