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Re: [O] Feature request: lists with letters
From: |
Nicolas Goaziou |
Subject: |
Re: [O] Feature request: lists with letters |
Date: |
Thu, 02 Feb 2017 18:55:21 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.1 (gnu/linux) |
Hello,
Titus von der Malsburg <address@hidden> 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