Well it's the middle of the night, and in this late caffeine fugue I've stumbled a hideous hack that seems to work. Code snippet follows:
Code:
li.hidden {
visibility: hidden;
height: 0 }
and
Code:
<ol>
<li class="hidden">1</li>
<li class="hidden">2</li>
<li class="hidden">3</li>
<li>List item starting at 4, but works in EPUB 2!</li>
<li>Please don't hate me</li>
<li>Obviously if you want to start at 50 or something it sucks to be you</li>
<li>So, yuck</li>
</ol>
Feel free to say ewwww. On text to speech, I'd /hope/ it doesn't read out the hidden values, but I don't know.
This is definitely one of those case where I'm torn between doing it, because I can, and feeling guilty about how horrible it is