From: Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr>
To: Titus von der Malsburg <malsburg@posteo.de>
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Feature request: lists with letters
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2017 18:55:21 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87tw8ccwae.fsf@nicolasgoaziou.fr> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87shnwbiyx.fsf@posteo.de> (Titus von der Malsburg's message of "Thu, 02 Feb 2017 18:28:22 +0100")
Hello,
Titus von der Malsburg <malsburg@posteo.de> writes:
> Items in lists can start with -, +, N), or N. (with N being an
> integer). It’s currently not possible, to use letters as in the
> following examples:
>
> a. First item
> b. Second item
>
> or
>
> a) First item
> b) Second item
>
> I believe it would make sense to allow letters in org-mode because
> that’s a very common way to label items in lists. I know that this has
> been discussed previously but to my knowledge there was no
> resolution. The counter argument against letters was that we wouldn’t
> know what labels to use when there are more items than letters, but I
> think this shouldn’t stop us. Reasons:
>
> a) Most lists have fewer items and cases where more than 26 labels are
> needed are rare.
> b) If a list has more than 26 items, the user is free to switch to
> bullet points or numbers.
> c) The limited number of letters hasn’t stopped people from using
> letters in many other contexts. For example, LaTeX offers letters
> and people think it’s useful.
> d) Similarly, people often use Roman numerals (e.g., iv.) although
> they also quickly become impractical (999 = CMXCIX).
> e) In some (academic) contexts, e.g. in linguistics, letters are
> conventionally used to label items in lists.
> f) Letters worked perfectly fine in this list.
>
> As to the question what org mode should do if a list is two long for
> letters: Here are two possible solutions:
>
> a) Label all items beyond the 26th with z, to make it visually very
> salient that there are not enough letters.
> b) Start over from letter a after z.
> c) Count in base 26 using letters as digits: a … z aa … az ba … bz …
>
> Personally, I would prefer solution c because it gives each item a
> unique label to which we can refer. But solutions a and b would be ok,
> too. It doesn’t really matter because this is just an uninteresting
> edge case and we shouldn’t obsess about it when the default case (<=26
> items) is complete unproblematic.
>
> Thanks for considering this proposal.
This proposal was implemented exactly 6 years ago. See
`org-list-allow-alphabetical'.
They introduce false positives, so they are not allowed by default.
Also, they probably should be implemented visually (i.e., with overlays,
à la `org-bullets') not syntactically. Anyway, here they are.
Regards,
--
Nicolas Goaziou
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2017-02-02 17:55 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2017-02-02 17:28 Feature request: lists with letters Titus von der Malsburg
2017-02-02 17:55 ` Nicolas Goaziou [this message]
2017-02-02 19:42 ` Titus von der Malsburg
2017-02-02 19:57 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2017-02-02 20:05 ` Titus von der Malsburg
2017-02-02 20:19 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2017-02-02 20:33 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2017-02-03 8:50 ` Rainer M Krug
2017-02-03 16:22 ` William Denton
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2017-02-03 11:37 Titus von der Malsburg
[not found] <1622a63fda844eb1aa553fdcd19a5758@HE1PR01MB1898.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com>
2017-02-03 12:40 ` Eric S Fraga
2017-02-03 13:47 ` Titus von der Malsburg
2017-02-06 15:34 ` Rasmus
2017-02-06 19:59 ` Titus von der Malsburg
2017-02-09 9:29 ` Rasmus
2017-02-10 10:58 ` Titus von der Malsburg
2017-02-11 1:20 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2017-02-13 10:51 ` Rasmus
2017-02-13 13:47 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2017-02-13 16:55 ` Rasmus
2017-02-13 20:39 ` Nicolas Goaziou
2017-02-14 11:25 ` Rasmus
2017-02-14 12:57 ` Nicolas Goaziou
[not found] ` <9385a1ca2a23417399fb441d6d85795d@HE1PR01MB1898.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com>
2017-02-11 12:39 ` Eric S Fraga
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