[Bug 5822] The headers attribute should be able to reference a td

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=5822





--- Comment #9 from Gez Lemon <gez.lemon@gmail.com>  2008-07-03 09:46:20 ---
(In reply to comment #7)
> > So a data cell can have more than one header in scope (chained headers), and a
> > cell containing data can be marked up as a header cell, and can also appear in
> > the middle of a data table?
> 
> Indeed. See:
> 
>    http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/tabular.html
> 
> ...for complete details.

That would definitely solve this particular problem, as the table isn't
irregular. Allowing hierarchical headers seems to contradict your first
response to this bug. It's not clear from the specification that hierarchical
headers are allowed, and that header cells can contain data as well as being
pure headers. The closest thing I could find was the definition of a cell:

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/tabular.html#cell

"Cells can either be data cells or header cells. Data cells correspond to td
elements, and have zero or more associated header cells. Header cells
correspond to th elements"

In light of your response here, should that be updated to say:

"Cells can either be data cells or header cells. Data cells correspond to td
elements, and have zero or more associated header cells. Header cells
correspond to th elements, and have zero or more associated header cells"

> > The user wouldn't hear "Property" over and over again, other than when they
> > query the cells "Budgeted", "Actual", and "Forecasted", which is where they
> > would be required.
> 
> Ah, ok. I misunderstood the request, my bad.
> 
> Even here, though, I'm still skeptical that the user would ever need to know
> that "Budgeted" was a "Property" or that "Partner Portal" was a "Child
> Investment". Certainly one could remove those two headers ("Property" and
> "Child Investment") from the table in the visual rendering without any loss to
> the reader, and I don't see any reason why that would differ for non-visual
> users.


The tables are generated automatically, and the headers change depending on
what options the analyst selects. As analysts trawl through hundreds of these
tables a day, they often need to remind themselves of context. They can quickly
do this by querying any cell, such as reminding themselves what kind of
investment a particular portfolio was part of. This does in fact cause a
problem visually too. We allow users to opt into having a fixed height on the
tbody and set the number of records they receive per page, or they end up
having to keep scrolling back to the top of the page to remind themselves of
the context.


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Received on Thursday, 3 July 2008 09:46:55 UTC