[Doc-SIG] Re: Docutils autonumbered lists

[Dethe Elza]

On Saturday, October 11, 2003, at 07:14 PM, David Goodger wrote:

> Dethe Elza wrote:
> > Today's issue is autonumbered lists.
>
> This came up recently on docutils-users.  I wrote:
>
> Some thought has gone into it, and a patch for one alternative has
> been produced.  See
> <http://docutils.sf.net/spec/rst/alternatives.html#auto-enumerated- 
> lists>.

Ah, I see.  I was thinking of #2:

#. Item one
#. Item two

or

3. Initialize first number
#. Autonumber from there

or

a) Initialize enumeration sequence
#) Autonumber from there

This is how a couple of the new docutils users around the office  
assumed it would work, so there is something to be said for the  
intuitiveness of this approach.  It is as close to the bullet lists of  
reST as possible, while still adding the extra information that  
enumerated lists need.

> > But after trying it and going through the docs, I appear to have
> > substituted footnote notation for list notation.
>
> I don't follow.  An example is worth a lot of words.  ;-)

 From the quickref:

Autonumbered footnotes are
possible, like using [#]_ and [#]_.

.. [#] This is the first one.
.. [#] This is the second one.

> > Is there a clear and present reason why we don't do autonumbering
> > for lists?
>
> No clear winning syntax has presented itself.  The only implementation
> done to date is for a candidate syntax that probably isn't a winner.
> The issue requires discussion and implementation.  It isn't
> interesting enough to me to make me want to implement it myself.

I guess I'll have to take a look at the patch and see if I can follow  
what it's doing.

--Dethe

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