This has come up before, and it wouldn't surprise me if there is already an issue for it, although I can't find one at the moment. (For all that I know I might even have opened such an issue myself but don't remember it.) I have a file with a proposal, but I don't remember if I ever posted it. My idea was to use curly brackets to distinguish counters from citations so `(@{foo})` would be the counter named `foo` and then optionally a colon and a number/letter which gives the numbering type and the start number as for regular lists so `@{foo:10}` = the counter `foo` starting at 10 with decimal numbers, `@{bar:x}` = the counter `bar` starting at 10 with lowercase roman numbers, `@{baz:J}` = the counter `baz` starting at 10 with upper alpha numbers, with the `:N` bit being ignored except at the first occurrence of the counter, or maybe resetting the counter, as I imagine that one of the main usea of this feature might be to have a separate count for each chapter, and then resetting the same counter makes sense.