A curiosity: <ol start="7"> not valid in epub 2.0.1?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Yep. The workarounds are more work than just styling your hard-coded numbers in p tags. And are likely to break under different conditions.

Not to mention that I've never understood how ol elements are all that useful in ebooks to begin with. Unless you're coding a website that generates lists from dynamic database data, your numbered lists are unlikely to ever change. So code them (lists) up once, style them, and be done with them.

Exactly. The only use is a database feeding either Document Mailmerge or Website.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

Lists are getting a nice hanging indent which is very hard to reproduce without it.

Something like the below CSS works quite well:

.fakelist {
  display: block;
  margin-bottom: 0.5em;
  margin-left: 2.5em;
  margin-right: 1.25em;
  margin-top: 0.5em;
  text-align: left;
  text-indent: -1.25em;
}

[Quoth]

And you can create that as a paragraph style in Word or LO Writer, then what DNSB has is automatically the CSS.

(12pt = 1em) If you want entire list indented to a 1.5 em regular paragraph first line indent.

Before Text: 36 pt /* wrap is 1.5 em in from first line. CSS margin-left */
After Text: 18pt /* CSS margin-right */
First Line : 18 pt /* i.e. negative compared to rest of paragraph. CSS text-indent */

Add a suitable amount for a nested list style.
Probably left justify. Adjust numbers to taste.

You can use different styles for first list item and last so that item spacing in the list is different from space at top of list and bottom of list.

[Simons Mith]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Maybe try display:none; speak:none;

display :
Element is removed from the normal flow and hidden; the space it occupied is collapsed

visibility:
Element is hidden from view, but is not removed from the normal flow

No, display: none doesn't work, because if it's not displayed at all, it doesn't increment the list counter. You have to display the list elements, but make them zero size. One of the reasons I think this is such a hideous hack.

I do prefer not to use fake paragraphs as <li>s though; I prefer to use a <ul> with a custom bulletless style and manually put numbers in that. At least it's a list then.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Simons Mith

I do prefer not to use fake paragraphs as <li>s though; I prefer to use a <ul> with a custom bulletless style and manually put numbers in that. At least it's a list then.

That should be OK. It only makes much difference if a list or not to badly written apps that are ignoring CSS.
That also will work in the word processor.