Re: Feature request: lists with letters

[Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr>]

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