Glitch when making lists

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1

The “auto-numbering” function won’t let me make “countdown” style lists (e.g. listing from #10 and counting down to #1). The site automatically re-numbers items so that they always appear to count UPwards (i.e. from #1 to #10).

Frustrating. Any way to “turn off” the automatic numbering function?

2

That’s a property of the HTML ordered list tag.

  1. Dave
  2. Letterman
<ol reversed>
<li>Dave</li>
<li>Letterman</li>
</ol>
3

It also doesn’t seem to allow non-sequential numbering. I posted a list with two entries tied at 3 and even though i put the next entry at 5 on posting it was changed automatically to 4. Oddly, when I click the edit link it shows my original numbering, it just won’t display it. I’m beginning to think this software was designed by my phone’s auto-complete.

4

If you want arbitrary numbering, such as 7, 5, 5, 3, 2, 1, either type the numbers and don’t use the ul tag, or use the ul tag and for each oddball number set the value manually:

  1. Dave
  2. Letterman
  3. top 10
<ol>
<li value="3">Dave</li>
<li value="3">Letterman</li>
<li value ="1">top 10</li>
</ol>

This is standard HTML, nothing specific to Discourse. Could be that Markdown or BBCode make that easier, I don’t know.

5

Well, I haven’t been using the ul tag. Most forum software doesn’t require you to use tags to make lists. What I’m doing is making a list manually and it’s converting 1-2-3-3-5 to 1-2-3-4-5.

1
2
3
3
5

Hmm interesting–it didn’t do it this time. Now to see if I can edit my dim sum list rankings.

6

Okay, what I’d done there was different.

  1. a
  2. b
  3. c and d
  4. e

I’ve typed the list above as 1-2-3-5, as it should correctly be ranked. but I can see on the right that it’s converting it to 1-2-3-4 in the preview. Is there really no way to prevent that short of typing html?

7

I’ve just been putting dashdashdash after my numbering - it seems to work.

Example:

5— bears
4— croissants
3— screwdrivers
2— dodo
1— food

8

I know nothing about Markdown or BBCode so I’m not sure how you stop them from renumbering. It’s not HTML.

This discussion might be about that:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/i-cannot-specify-an-arbitrarily-numbered-list-in-markdown/11151

9

That’s a simple enough workaround. I guess you have to trick it into not treating the numbers as numbers.

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