Numbering spec

[David Faure <faure@kde.org>]

The goal
======

Being able to write lists such as:

1. Main Chapter
1.1. Foo
1.2. Bar
1.A. Some kind of annex in this chapter
1.B. Another annex

Currently the change of numbering style means that the last two paragraphs would
actually be considered as part of another list. They should be in the same list, but
with a different style.

The current solution
=============
I'm not sure if OOo can do this?
As I understand it, if L1 defines all levels as using numbers (1. 1.1. 1.2. etc.)
and L2 defines all levels and specifies 1.A. for level 2, then writing the list with
L1 and then L2 will break up the list. OK maybe in the above case it wouldn't appear
but if Main Chapter was number 3, then the annex should 3.A. and not 1.A. ...

The KWord solution
==============
KWord defines one list level at a time in a list style, instead of ten, which IMHO makes more
sense in cases like the above.
L1 defines the style for "Main Chapter", level 1.
L2 defines the style for level 2 with numbers
L3 defines the style for level 2 using uppercase alphabetical numbering (A, B...)

      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="1" text:style-name="L1">
        <text:p text:style-name="P1">Main chapter</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>
      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="2" text:style-name="L2">
        <text:p text:style-name="P2">Foo</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>
      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="2" text:style-name="L2">
        <text:p text:style-name="P2">Bar</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>
      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="2" text:style-name="L3">
        <text:p text:style-name="P2">Some kind of annex in this chapter</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>
      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="2" text:style-name="L3">
        <text:p text:style-name="P2">Another annex</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>


The list-id solution
============
Obviously the kword solution can't apply to OOo where "a new list style means a new list".
To keep that behavior, we could add an optional list-id attribute. 
Every paragraph above, would say text:list-id="1", which effectively makes them part of the same list.
The change of list-style would then not create trouble in OOo.

The style-override solution
=================
Florian made the suggestion attached in numproposal.odt. As I understand it, the above example
could be modelled along the lines of:

      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="1" text:style-name="L1">
        <text:p>Main chapter</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>
      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="2" text:style-name="L1">
        <text:p>Foo</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>
      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="2" text:style-name="L1">
        <text:p>Bar</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>
      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="2" text:style-name="L1" text:style-override="L2">
        <text:p>Some kind of annex in this chapter</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>
      <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="2" text:style-name="L1" text:style-override="L2">
        <text:p>Another annex</text:p>
      </text:numbered-paragraph>

Where the L1 indicates that all those paragraphs belong to the same list.

Well, this is almost correct; according to the example in Florian's document,
the above might rather get me the following result:
1. Main chapter
1.1 Foo
1.2 Bar
1.C Some kind of annex in this chapter
1.D Another annex

i.e. C and D for 3 and 4, instead of A and B. But of course we can use text:start-value="A" to
make the first annex start with "A" - I'm OK with that, it makes both behaviors possible.

What I don't understand, is what the style-override solution allows to model, that
the style-id solution doesn't allow to model (or vice-versa). Florian says style-override
is more compatible to MSWord, because "the generic approach we took using the 
list-ids can not be mapped to Word". How can this be, if
  text:list-id="MyList" text:style-name="L1" 
(in the first solution) is equivalent to (in the second solution)
  text:style-name="MyList" text:style-override="L1"
?
I don't see the conceptual difference; the first attribute indicates which list
the paragraph belongs to, the second attribute indicates which style formatting
should be used for it. What am I missing?

-- 
David Faure, faure@kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).

numbered-paragraph-example1.odt

numproposal.odt