A List of One.

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

I keep doing this, and it just seems wrong to me.

I'll set up a page structure, or a uniform way of grouping things, using a
list For Example:

<h1>Fangorn Forest<h1>
<ol>
<li>Oak Tree</li>
<li>Ash Tree </li>
<li>Beech Tree </li>
</ol>

and then...

<h1>Lothlorien Wood</h1>
<ol>
<li>Mallorn Tree</li>
<ol>


As you can see, there is only one object in the second list, so it isn't
really a list, but it's the same type of information as the other list, so
makes sense to mark it up the same, and it /could/ be a list in the future,
if someone planted more trees. It seems semantically wrong to have a list
of one, is there a better solution? or am I just mad?

 

[Barbara de Zoete]

[ Cross posted to alt.html; F'up set to alt.html ]

What you describe, seems to be a list item to me. And you can't use a
list item outside a list. But indeed a list of one item seems odd.
Couldn't you use:

<ul>
<li>Fangorn Forest
<ol>
<li>Oak Tree</li>
<li>Ash Tree </li>
<li>Beech Tree </li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Lothlorien Wood
<ol start="1">
<li>Mallorn Tree</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ul>

That way the list item and the one-list-item-list it is part of, is part
of a larger, proper list.

Additionally you would use css to style the list items of the first
level to look like headings (or you could indeed mark them up as
headings).

Davémon,

Couldn't you have set a proper notice that you crossposted and set a
follow up to another group than alt.html? And why choose
alt.design.graphics to follow up to? This is definately a markup issue and
has nothing to do with adg.
Had I noticed sooner that you set a follow up, I wouldn't have posted a
reply or would have removed that upappropriate group altogehter.

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

Barbara de Zoete arranged shapes to form:

What you describe, seems to be a list item to me. And you can't use a list
item outside a list. But indeed a list of one item seems odd. Couldn't you
use:

<ul>
<li>Fangorn Forest
<ol>
<li>Oak Tree</li>
<li>Ash Tree </li>
<li>Beech Tree </li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>Lothlorien Wood
<ol start="1">
<li>Mallorn Tree</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ul>

That way the list item and the one-list-item-list it is part of, is part
of a larger, proper list.

Hmm. Great idea, but Fangorn and Lothlorien are 2 different documents...

Additionally you would use css to style the list items of the first level
to look like headings (or you could indeed mark them up as headings).

OOPS. I accidently set followups to ADG. Sorry, set back to alt.html now.

one of those days.

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

Barbara de Zoete arranged shapes to form:

Davémon,

Couldn't you have set a proper notice that you crossposted and set a
follow up to another group than alt.html? And why choose
alt.design.graphics to follow up to? This is definately a markup issue and
has nothing to do with adg.
Had I noticed sooner that you set a follow up, I wouldn't have posted a
reply or would have removed that upappropriate group altogehter.

Barbara,

You are correct - it is most definately a mark-up issue, not one of
presentation. I didn't realise that I'd set follow-up to ADG and I
sincerely apologise for my own stupidity in doing so, and the confusion
created.

Having said that, thank you for your reply.

 

[Toby Inkster]

As you can see, there is only one object in the second list, so it isn't
really a list

You're entering a world of deep philosophy.

Is a single piece of paper on a desk a pile of paper? Is a single stamp a
collection?

Best to leave such semantic quibbles to professional thinkers and not
worry about it. Use OL.

Personally, I think a list with no items is semantically OK, but the HTML
4.01 DTD disagrees.

 

[Neredbojias]

I keep doing this, and it just seems wrong to me.

Hehehe. You got me just like you got Babs. My "real" reply is in
alt.design.graphics.

 

[dorayme]

Barbara,

You are correct - it is most definately a mark-up issue, not one of
presentation. I didn't realise that I'd set follow-up to ADG and I
sincerely apologise for my own stupidity in doing so, and the confusion
created.

Having said that, thank you for your reply.

God almighty!

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

Toby Inkster arranged shapes to form:

You're entering a world of deep philosophy.

Is a single piece of paper on a desk a pile of paper? Is a single stamp a
collection?

That's actually really helpful, because it defines the grouping in terms of
an intention rather than the nature of the grouping itself. I tend to think
of HTML as simply /describing/ a documents structure (pile), and quite
rightly, it can be used to categorise it's purpose (collection).

Best to leave such semantic quibbles to professional thinkers and not
worry about it. Use OL.

I'll phone Saussure and Chomsky later! I do agree that in practice it
matters not a jot.

Personally, I think a list with no items is semantically OK, but the HTML
4.01 DTD disagrees.

Lists with no items? That doesn't make any sense to me at all!

 

[Toby Inkster]

Lists with no items? That doesn't make any sense to me at all!

The mathematical equivalent for the UL element would be what is called a
"set".

A set is a group of numbers/shapes/letters/vectors/whatever. Some examples
are the set of all positive integers, the set of letters that directly
follow vowels in the alphabet, and the set of all people called Kevin.

The set is an abstract concept, and can be dealt with mathematically, in
many cases without worrying about how many (if any) elements it contains.

 

[Ed Mullen]

The mathematical equivalent for the UL element would be what is called a
"set".

A set is a group of numbers/shapes/letters/vectors/whatever. Some examples
are the set of all positive integers, the set of letters that directly
follow vowels in the alphabet, and the set of all people called Kevin.

The set is an abstract concept, and can be dealt with mathematically, in
many cases without worrying about how many (if any) elements it contains.

And in this example based on mathematics, a set can contain null items.
That is, a set is still a set even if its content is empty.

So. An HTML construct of:

<ul>
</ul>

may be odd but not necessarily "wrong." such a construct will, of
course, have ramifications of visual spacing but it won't break anything
in any other regard.

Intellectually interesting, not sure it's valuable from a practical
standpoint.

 

[dorayme]

The mathematical equivalent for the UL element would be what is called a
"set".

A set is a group of numbers/shapes/letters/vectors/whatever. Some examples
are the set of all positive integers, the set of letters that directly
follow vowels in the alphabet, and the set of all people called Kevin.

The set is an abstract concept, and can be dealt with mathematically, in
many cases without worrying about how many (if any) elements it contains.

Indeed, a main point here being that a class or set can have no
members. One can have a building that no one has yet occupied or
fled from, or a club that has yet to get a member or no longer
has members. It is thought by some that classes exist
independently of their members. And so they can exist without
members at all.

In a book called Principia Mathematica, written by Bertrand
Russell, a philosopher, with Alfred North Whitehead, a
mathematician, there was a serious attempt to reduce mathematics
to logic. Principal tool of the attempted reduction was the
logical notion of class. This notion is also used in mathematics,
maths employing, naturally enough, much logic.

There are some possibly deep questions peculiar to lists - but I
can't think of any at the moment.

But questions about number are quite prevalent in and out of
philosophy and mathematics:

In Farewell My Lovely, a Raymond Chandler thriller, Marlow, over
the phone, says to Moose Malloy, something like, "Have you heard
of Baxter Wilson Grayle?" and Moose replies "How many people is
that?"

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

The mathematical equivalent for the UL element would be what is called a
"set".

Since the UL element does not really mean an unordered collection (it would
not be correct for a browser, or a server, or a proxy to transform
<ul><li>foo<li>bar</ul> to <ul><li>bar<li>foo</ul>), I would rather say that
the UL element corresponds to a sequence (ordered list). A sequence does not
stop being a sequence just because it has no explicitly shown sequence
numbers.

The set is an abstract concept, and can be dealt with mathematically, in
many cases without worrying about how many (if any) elements it contains.

So is the sequence. It's just a design decision in HTML to disallow an empty
UL element (or, to put it positively, to require that it contain at least one
LI element.

In a more logical design, empty lists might be allowed as a placeholder for a
list, or as a construct that will dynamically be transformed to a non-empty
list by adding list items. But browsers (and other interested parties) would
then have to be prepared to handling empty lists meaningfully.

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

Toby Inkster arranged shapes to form:

The mathematical equivalent for the UL element would be what is called a
"set".

A set is a group of numbers/shapes/letters/vectors/whatever. Some examples
are the set of all positive integers, the set of letters that directly
follow vowels in the alphabet, and the set of all people called Kevin.

The set is an abstract concept, and can be dealt with mathematically, in
many cases without worrying about how many (if any) elements it contains.

However, HTML is a language, and I don't think Language and Mathematics are
directly comparable.

For example, in maths, two negatives make a positive, wheras in language
(English at least) two negatives are just emphatically negative. "I don't
know nothing about it".

The other difference between the idea of a list and a set, is that lists
imply an order, even an unordered list <ul> still retains that quality.
Mathematically [set] that order isn't important, but in terms of language
[lists], the position of the object in realtion to the other objects
invariably is.

If you have either 1 thing, or 0 things, then they can't be sequentially
related to other things, so therefore not lists. I think... ?

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

Jukka K. Korpela arranged shapes to form:

Since the UL element does not really mean an unordered collection (it would
not be correct for a browser, or a server, or a proxy to transform
<ul><li>foo<li>bar</ul> to <ul><li>bar<li>foo</ul>), I would rather say that
the UL element corresponds to a sequence (ordered list). A sequence does not
stop being a sequence just because it has no explicitly shown sequence
numbers.


So is the sequence. It's just a design decision in HTML to disallow an empty
UL element (or, to put it positively, to require that it contain at least one
LI element.

In a more logical design, empty lists might be allowed as a placeholder for a
list, or as a construct that will dynamically be transformed to a non-empty
list by adding list items. But browsers (and other interested parties) would
then have to be prepared to handling empty lists meaningfully.

I agree 100% with your rationale, and 0% with the conculsion! MathML might
well allow empty [set] definitions if they are useful to maths, but the
idea of empty lists doesn't seem logical at all to language or document
mark-up.

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

dorayme arranged shapes to form:

Indeed, a main point here being that a class or set can have no
members. One can have a building that no one has yet occupied or
fled from, or a club that has yet to get a member or no longer
has members. It is thought by some that classes exist
independently of their members. And so they can exist without
members at all.

Of course a building exists without people in it - in exactly the same way
that "a list of people who are in an empty building" does not. ie. I can go
and look at the "building", I cannot look at an empty list, I can look at
the space where that list might appear - but calling that a list is like
calling an empty lot a building...

But questions about number are quite prevalent in and out of
philosophy and mathematics:

In Farewell My Lovely, a Raymond Chandler thriller, Marlow, over
the phone, says to Moose Malloy, something like, "Have you heard
of Baxter Wilson Grayle?" and Moose replies "How many people is
that?"

lol!

Of course, "Have you heard of Baxter, Wilson and Grayle?" would more
clearly signify multiple entities in the way that "Baxter Wilson Grayle"
does not. However, there is also the option which is that "Baxter, Wilson &
Grayle" refer to a collective entity (a firm of solicitors perhaps) and I'm
quite sure they would have argued for and against "Wilson, Grayle & Baxter"
and "Grayle, Baxter & Wilson", because being a list, sequence is important.

 

[PeterMcC]

Davémon" <"davémon wrote in

Toby Inkster arranged shapes to form:


However, HTML is a language, and I don't think Language and
Mathematics are directly comparable.

In lots of ways, they are.

For example, in maths, two negatives make a positive, wheras in
language (English at least) two negatives are just emphatically
negative. "I don't know nothing about it".

That's a double negative - it means the positive: if I don't know *nothing*
about it then I do know *something* about it.

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

PeterMcC arranged shapes to form:

Davémon" <"davémon wrote in


In lots of ways, they are.


That's a double negative - it means the positive: if I don't know *nothing*
about it then I do know *something* about it.

Among the people who use the phrase, double negatives of that kind are
simply emphatic, and it is /always/ understood and used as such.

 

[PeterMcC]

Davémon" <"davémon wrote in

PeterMcC arranged shapes to form:


Among the people who use the phrase, double negatives of that kind are
simply emphatic, and it is /always/ understood and used as such.

/Always/ might be a bit difficult to maintain, though I'd be unreasonable to
not allow a little hyperbolic licence

I agree with you entirely about usage, there are countless utterances whose
understood meaning is not that which is literally signified by the words and
syntax used.

We see poorly structured maths, HTML, Perl, etc. that is understood by those
who produced it - and those who look at it also understand what the writer
intended to convey.

The syntax and logic of the declarative "I don't know nothing" is, I think,
clear in its literal sense.

Then, what do I know?

 

[Neredbojias]

In a more logical design, empty lists might be allowed as a
placeholder for a list, or as a construct that will dynamically be
transformed to a non-empty list by adding list items. But browsers
(and other interested parties) would then have to be prepared to
handling empty lists meaningfully.

I agree 100% with your rationale, and 0% with the conculsion! MathML
might well allow empty [set] definitions if they are useful to maths,
but the idea of empty lists doesn't seem logical at all to language or
document mark-up.

In computer-related languages, the first thing is usually the "0" thing.
Javascript, for example, numbers the initial item in the images array (-and
all arrays) "0". It can be argued that a zero item should be an empty item
but the logical fact is that even an empty item is one part of the set of
"whatever" selected from all possible parts of the set of "whatever". An
empty list is conceptually still a list if originally defined so and not
nothing (-using the double negative in its correct form.)

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

PeterMcC arranged shapes to form:

Davémon" <"davémon wrote in


/Always/ might be a bit difficult to maintain, though I'd be unreasonable to
not allow a little hyperbolic licence

Among the people who use the phrase, always.

I agree with you entirely about usage, there are countless utterances whose
understood meaning is not that which is literally signified by the words and
syntax used.

We see poorly structured maths, HTML, Perl, etc. that is understood by those
who produced it - and those who look at it also understand what the writer
intended to convey.

That's very true - the encoder and decoder need to have the same
understanding of the code which is being used.

With that in mind, syntactically, what does:

<ul>
<li>Oak.</li>
</ul>

convey to you that

<p>Oak.</p>

doesn't?

The syntax and logic of the declarative "I don't know nothing" is, I think,
clear in its literal sense.

I agree, but logic and syntax is of no help at all in understanding its
more common correct figurative use. Is there a similar way to use maths in
a figurative way? Does context change maths as it does language, so that
1+1 != 2 somewhere in the universe? That would make them directly
comparable.

Hmm. I like the idea of using HTML for presentational purposes as being "a
figurative use of the language".

Then, what do I know?

I don't know!