commonmark
Alpha/roman list items
(I didn't see an existing issue about this, but I'm new here, so correct me if I'm wrong.)
I'd like to suggest adding some ability to specify lists with alpha (or roman) numbering. Currently list items must be numeric, and you can specify start numbers, but you can't specify whether they get rendered as numeric, alpha, or roman (<ol type="...">). Relevant links:
I’m not sure whether this would belong into the core specification or into an extension.
You cannot have a. and a) for Roman letters and i. and i) for Roman numerals at the same time, because they are ambiguous if arbitrary start values were to be supported like existing decimal ordinal list items do. (Uppercase is no different.) Note that c. and d) would be equivalent to 100. and 500., respectively, and some languages have words that would be valid Roman numbers (e.g. mix = 1009) and could appear at the end of a sentence before the period and after a randomly inserted soft line break. In short, Roman numerals are not worth the hassle.
For alphabetic lists you would be limited to 26 values, because supporting multiple letters is asking for the same trouble mentioned above. This way we would not have to arbitrarily decide whether aa was followed by ab or by bb.
Related discourses
- Letter-ordered Lists
- Alternative (1) ordered list syntax
- Enumerated lists without explicit number, ATX headings with explicit number
I think that roman numerals should be left off and left up to styling (and I think any attempt to support that styling directly in CM should be left as an extension, probably).
