* Kevin Cannon wrote:
>I just looked through the XHTML2 spec and noticed that the ol tag does't
>appear to allow you to specify the start attribute again. I feel that is
>part of the markup rather than something that should be left to style.

This has been discussed to some extend in march 2003 on this list. Some
people think that list numbering is purely stylistic, some people (like
you) consider the numbering content; I think there is a general dislike
for the "start" and "value" attributes as you cannot use them for some
things some authors want to do (e.g., linking parts of a splitted list)
for example. I do not think that these attributes would help you much,
your document would break if I specify to render ol elements with a, b,
c, ... numbering style in my user style sheet. I've asked the HTML WG to
tell the community about their consensus what features XHTML 2.0 should
provide in this regard in

  http://www.w3.org/mid/3e7d6639.12593889@smtp.bjoern.hoehrmann.de 

to be able to propose a better solution, but I am not aware of any reply
to that message...