Re: Heuristic Tests for Data Tables (Discussion)

On Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:38:15 +0200, Simon Pieters <simonp@opera.com> wrote:

> One way the algorithm could be specced to take into account all of the  
> headers, scope and implicit associations, is as a several-pass through  
> the table, as follows:
>
>    1. For each cell in the table that has a headers attribute, split the
>       value on spaces and for each token, if getElementById returns a TH  
> or
>       TD element that is part of the same table and isn't the same cell,
>       associate them together.
>    2. For each TH element in the table that has a scope attribute, use  
> the
>       algorithm in HTML5, ignoring the auto state.
>    3. Apply the smart colspan algorithm above.
>    4. Apply the smart rowspan algorithm.

Another idea is to imply scope="col" on header cells in <thead> (before  
step 2) so that they apply to the whole table, although we might need to  
do some more research as to whether doing so would be helpful or harmful.

-- 
Simon Pieters
Opera Software