Shrinking type in lists

[sgirsberger]

Hi. Back with more questions about lists.

Attached is a screen grab of the split between code and design of the book I’m cleaning up in DW, and an RTF of my coding of a couple of the lists.

The lists are all indented as planned, and ordered/unordered where planned, BUT as the hierarchy descends, the type gets smaller (see the LL-BL1, LL-BL2, LL-BL3 list items). Yes, there is a reason for the classes -- space above the first list item and below the last list item in the print book. I have tried controlling this by setting percentages higher than the point size of the <p> tag (the desired size for ALL of these lists), but I must be missing something, because nothing I do works. I tried setting the size the same as the <p> tag first, but that didn’t work, and that was when I resorted to either a larger em or percentage.

I'm perfectly happy to recode the lists, but I'm at my wits’ end right now, and I need to move this along. Your advice will be greatly appreciated.

[Toxaris]

I am not quite sure what you mean, but if you mean that your lists have a smaller font, than that can probably be changed quite easy.
Put the following in your stylesheet:

ul,ol {
font-size: 1em;
}

Did you try in different readers/browsers?

[sgirsberger]

Thanks for your advice, Toxaris, but I ended up having to spec 1.15em for the affected list styles for the time being. In future projects, I'll examine the cascades more carefully and apply more practical style sheets instead of just what I’m getting from InDesign. As I learn more, I’ll be able to use the export options intelligently.

Of course the next question to ask is why one <ul></ul> pair needs <li> elements with classes LL-BL1, LL-BL2 and LL-BL3. Looks like a case of "class and DIV"itis.

[sgirsberger]

Yes, regrettably, as a traditional book designer, I have paragraph styles within my book files that include one style for the first list item, one style for the middle list items, and one for the third list item in any given group of list items. The first list item is generally styled with space above, while the third list item is generally styled with space below. The paragraph style for the middle item(s), which has no space above/below, is routinely the style on which the other two are based, and the body text (<p>) is generally the parent style for the lot.

I do this to avoid local overrides, which would present their own unique problems when ported over to CSS, I’m sure.

It’s difficult to give up old habits, shall1028, but once I get the inheritance concepts in hand, I know I will find it much easier to format across many files. Amazing how my nicely organized styles and files only do about two-thirds of the work upon export from InDesign CS5.5.

[DaleDe]

Using a CSS of ol + li {} should allow fixing the first item in the list but I don't know how you fix the last item.

Dale

[Jellby]

If you want space above the first item and below the last item, shouldn't it be equivalent to having space above and below the whole list (ol/ul)?