Table formatting

I have put together a few ideas concerning the development of CSS
properties to control the reading of table rows. Unfortunately I expect to
be very busy this week, and will thus be unable to write this proposal
properly until at least next weekend. Here is an outline that may
stimulate some thought and discussion.


What would be your reaction to a CSS property, perhaps called speakrow,
which would contain a mixture of speech commands (for audio cues, pauses
etc., as defined in the audio section of CSS 2), and references to cells
in the current row? Each cell could be numbered, from 1 to n (where n is
the number of cells in the row). Note how this differs from the number of
columns, since there could be cells which span any number of columns; but
under this numbering scheme, only cells are counted. Expressions could be
written such as:
cells(1)
read cell 1 in current row, and similarly:
cells(1-4) cells(5-3) [note how this last example reverses the order]

cells(1-n) [n is the number of cells in the row]
cells(n-1) [reversing the reading order: thus reading the table from right
to left]

The speakrow property should also provide for audio cues and for text
strings (between quotation marks).

Another property can also be defined, called SPEAKCELL, which defines the
procedure for speaking each cell. It contains a comma separated list of
speech commands and the two key words "header" and "data", in any order.
The key words refer to the header of the current cell and its content,
respectively. Thus, for example:

speakcell: cue(bell.aiff), header, paus(75%), data;

Results in sounding of the bell cue, followed by a reading of the header,
a 75% pause (as defined in ACSS) and a reading of the cell's contents, in
that order.

Similarly:

speakrow: cue(dong.wav), "Population growth in", cells(1), "was",
cells(2);

means that the dong.wav cue is played before the reading of each row; the
text strings and cell contents are read in the order shown.

Received on Sunday, 2 November 1997 17:33:22 UTC