Styling lists in org-export (html)

Question

So, for variety's sake I'd like lists and sublists to have different styles. In emacs, I've enabled org-list-allow-alphabetical, but this doesn't work with export (not a bug). However, there doesn't seem to be any simple way to change styles without adding extensive latex or html code to the file.

For example, with a list like this,

1. Parent
   1. child

I'd like to use a different marker for the sublist, to avoid confusion, eg

1. Parent
   a) child

Latex seems to do this rather well by default. Is there a way to specify it for other exporters?

Answer 1

The html output from the exporter is just nested ol lists without any labels. To alter the labels you can use CSS:

#+HTML_HEAD: <style type="text/css">
#+HTML_HEAD:  ol ol { list-style-type: lower-alpha; }
#+HTML_HEAD: </style>

  1. first
  2. second
     a. sub
     b. under
  3. third

To change the fullstops after the labels to something else see https://stackoverflow.com/q/5945161/4050592 for appropriate CSS.

Note that you can use the #+ATTR_HTML to add specific attributes to elements including a list. This way you can make specific styling, such as:

#+HTML_HEAD: <style type="text/css">
#+HTML_HEAD:  ol#al { list-style-type: upper-alpha; }
#+HTML_HEAD: </style>

#+ATTR_HTML: :id al
  1. first
  2. second
  3. third