While constructing the previous post, I noticed a number of things I didn’t like, particularly in the list editing – the lists are cramped together, the lineheights aren’t right, and there’s no way to ‘paragraph off’ a list, like so:

• This is a list item.
• This is a continuing thought within the list item.
• This is another list item.

Notice the break in the continuing item. That’s achieved with a special list item (using <br/> is crude – hard to style.)

If you specify a css rule for a continuing list item like so:

li.continue { list-style:none; margin-top:0.4em!important; }

you can define a ‘continuing list paragraph’. Problem is, when WordPress sees such a thing, it strips it out.

So, I’ve had to crawl through the code and figure out what the heck is going on. Way down deep inside, there’s a file that lists ‘allowedposttags’ – an array of arrays following canonical rules. A bit of a hack, and I’ve got <li> behaving the way I want.

Just have to save off the changes in case of upgrade.

Another thing I like is a stand-off paragraph – something to introduce a new thought in the text, without having to use something like a header. That’s how this paragraph is defined. Again, another class description:

p.class  { padding-top:2.0em; }

Or some such thing, and now I have a stand-off paragraph.

As usual, packages are great – they get things going. But, to get what you want, you have to dig inside of them and control them by the tail. WordPress is no different.