Re: Question about tables

<quote who="Becker, Klaus (LNG-MUE)">

> maybe my posting belongs to another group (-> xhtml). But it has also a
> reference to WCAG-Guidelines.

Well, it depends on whether you mean "what is the most accessible use..."
But then, so long as validity is considered an aspect of accessibility,
the question makes sense here.

> Ok, I have a question about the use of the elements THEAD, TBODY  and
> TFOOT.
> In the xhtml-dtd the element TABLE is described as followed:
>
> <!ELEMENT table
>      (caption?, (col*|colgroup*), thead?, tfoot?, (tbody+|tr+))>
>
> In my opinion, none of the elements THEAD, TBODY  and TFOOT dependent on
> another element. I can use every element as "stand alone" element. On some
> websites (for example: w3c-schools -> xhtml) it is said, that every
> element
> of those three elements is used with each other of those three elements:
> The three Elements can only be used all together and not "stand alone".

The specification says you can choose to have a thead or tfoot
independently of each other. It says that you have to have at least one
tbody. (If I am reading the DTD correctly at 5am). I am not sure why the
W3C Schools site (which is not in any way affiliated to W3C) would say
something different, but I don't see any reason why you cannot use tbody
alone, nor why you cannot use thead or tfoot independently, although it
seems like a good practice in any large table to have the three.

I would follow the advice of the WCAG techniques as being correct.

On the other hand, most HTML browsers are happy to accept tables without a
tbody (or for that matter a lot of other rubbish posing as HTML) so most
authoring tools don't put it in :-(

> But:
> In the document "HTML Techniques for WCAG 2.0" explainded the use of those
> elements as followed:
>
>> Use thead to group repeated table headers, tfoot for
>> repeated table footers, and tbody for other groups of rows.

(This is my early morning advice and may contain traces of nuts)

cheers

Chaals