From dsr@w3.org Tue Oct 21 10:26:47 1997 Received: from www10.w3.org (www10.w3.org [18.23.0.20]) by mail3.access.digex.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA10342; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 10:26:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from hazel.hpl.hp.com (host5-99-55-14.btinternet.com [195.99.55.14]) by www10.w3.org (8.8.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id KAA04698; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 10:26:29 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: www10.w3.org: Host host5-99-55-14.btinternet.com [195.99.55.14] claimed to be hazel.hpl.hp.com Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 10:24:16 -0400 () From: Dave Raggett To: Al Gilman cc: dd@w3.org, Al Gilman Subject: Re: how to deal with TABLE heartburn In-Reply-To: <199710201801.OAA21422@access2.digex.net> Message-ID: X-X-Sender: dsr@anansi.w3.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: ROr On Mon, 20 Oct 1997, Al Gilman wrote: > I still have a heartburn over the AXES attribute. > > I may have time to write up some examples between now and the end > of the month. > > I don't want to represent this as an HC team conculsion, but I > think that W3C may yet thank me if I can communicate the problem. > > How should we proceed on this? In the absence of something better, Jason White and I seem to be happy with axes together with scope for simpler cases. There seems to be two issues as far as I can tell. a) effective ways to associate headers with cells to which they apply which may include other headers b) precisely what such associations mean (a) can be handled from two ends: from the point of view of the header cell and from the point of view of cell to which the header applies. Scope uses the former while axes uses the later perspective. Axes is good for headers which are positioned irregularly. Scope is good for common cases. (b) is tricky in general, however a simple solution may be to use class values on either header or data cells, as this is possible with the current specification. An alternative would be to introduce 3 place tuples which label the association between two cells. If the set of labels is small, then it may also be feasible to represent such labelled associations by using different attribute names for each member of the set, where the attribute is provided either with the header in which case it names the other cell, or vice versa. I feel this is going over the top, and until we have had further deployment experience we ought to hang fire. The simple unlabelled assocations between headers and data cells have at least stood the test of the last 2 years and been shown to apply to a reasonable range of cases. I hope this exposition will help you to make your ideas clearer. We have very little time left, to change the spec prior to Proposed Recommendation status, but there will still be a chance to introduce changes before it becomes a full Recommendation. Regards, -- Dave Raggett http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett phone: +44 122 578 2984 (or 2521) +44 385 320 444 (gsm mobile) World Wide Web Consortium (on assignment from HP Labs)