sgml/xml/xhtml's insistence on
text as strict hierarchies
of containers
especially when
entirely notional
paragraphs
are granted positions of
(undeserved) honor
in those hierarchies
but lately i've been pondering
the ordering principles
(alphabetical chronological best-first etc)
by which we sequence
textbites
broadly generalising the narrow concept
of list
until suddenly the prospect
of text
discourse
as hierarchies of
lists within lists
has become attractive
formatting styles, of course
are vastly irrelevant here
(a list can be just
two words
unpunctuated)
the emphasis should instead be on
ordering principles
and set-membership principles
lists offering choices
lists exhausting domains
lists sampling subsets
lists specifying procedural steps
lists structuring arguments
lists arbitrarily
prefixing and postfixing
auxiliary text materials
like headers and footers
and sidebars
.
