Re: What's allowed in table cells? (fwd)

| Not at all.  I'm getting a growing feeling that you just don't care
to learn
| anything and you just have this thing about writing valid code.  The 
| impression you've given me is a designed too lazy to deal with
writing good
| code.  You keep harping on the same thing "I don't understand the
DTD"
| "Why didn't they do it this way so I could get it?"  "I just ignore
it
| anyway because I don't agree with it"  That is what your statements
boil
| down to - an immature attitude towards standards and an unwillingness
to
| learn any of the history that got us to this point.  I've been
working with
| HTML since *before* Mosaic, maybe you should consider learning some
of
| the history and the path that got us to this point before going off
on a
| tear about things you don't understaand or don't like.

I have been coding for 6 months... there is a point, as you said in
your last message, when it becomes appearent that things aren't
needed...  I have not found validators do do me much good... they only
pick on code that is there for a reason ... I want something to detect
my mistakes...  and further more 100% validated code doesn't display
worth crap on MSIE... I constantly have to doctor the code between MSIE
and netscape due to their such different rendering ideas ... that alone
breaks HTML ...  until that day where code will display reliably on all
platforms... then we'll see about taking out the props...



| And you'd look like a complete moron for doing so.  Don't cry wolf
when
| you don't have a clue.  Go look at <http://www.livingston.com/> -
I've
| looked at it in Lynx, Mosaic, NS, and MSIE - and we get hits from all
| those and more - and it works.  The only thing I've seen it fail in
is 
| XMosaic 2.6, which had a weak attempt at table support.  It didn't
support
| the standard, but it recognizes the tags, so it draws a garbage
table.
| But in other versions the tabular pages display fine, and they work
fine in
| Lynx too.  And all of the pages validate cleanly under HTML 3.2.

and one persons implementation of A table makes everyones?  Wrong.... 
I use tables for lots of things...  checking their page, I see nothing
special about their tables...

No, their pages don't validate ... not to me...  they're explicitly
using <BR>   thats non-portable...  for one browser their lines may
partially wrap before the <BR> kicks, on another browser and video
mode, there may be 50% wasted screen.... bad example ...  I am already
disapointed in their coding techniques...

Don't get me wrong...  I admire a well designed very portable fully
scalable work of HTML coding ...  but thinking that a validator must be
used to do such work is insane!  It can be done, and probably proves
that the person is not lazy, due to the ammount of work it takes...

Try taking a look at
http://www.htcnet.com/~msftrncs/msftrncs/files/index.html, an
experiment, with lynx... I can't swear to the current code being
validated, but it was at one time ...  and that alone does't mean it
looks any good in lynx... when I started working on lynx compatibility,
the validators barfed...

of course .. I have also given up on that design for several reasons...
and when I feel like continueing that project I will update those pages
as I experiment with a new design... in the mean time... until there
are any physical rules to follow, (HTML 3.2 itself leaves itself too
open, SGML is the only thing that physically limits coding practises,
and until a browser/all browsers use SGML to decode HTML there is no
need to stop experimenting with what works and what doesn't...

| Funny.  I've had no problems designing table that display ok in
Mosaic
| and Lynx - even before they got table support.  It jsut takes some
*EFFORT*
| and *THOUGHT* at the design phase to layout a table that will work.

No, you designed your table for compatibility with LYNX ... I am try to
make existing tables look good on Lynx, and unchanged on all others...
have you done that?  I'll give you some to try! (just start browsing
around the site I mentioned above)

| You can't keep it tabular, but you can have in collapse into a list,
etc,
| if you know what you are doing.  And it is all perfectly valid code.

| >table cells...  nothing said a cell must have content...  and from
what
| >I remember, a TR can contain content... but maybe i better read that
| >part of 3.2 spec first?
| 
| Yeah, you should, since you look foolish talking about things you
haven't
| bothered to research yet.

I look at many more things than specs ... I look at browser notes among
design help files...   while I can not guarantee everything I read ..
the sources that stated a TR can contain markup other than <TD><TH>
will be contacted... but it will be a while before their sources are
updated...

| I loved your comment about tables - paranoid for a reason or just by
| nature?

No, you have yet to tell me who thought up tables... was it Marc
Anderson? or was it tim berner-lee (sp?)  I doubt it was the latter... 
tables sound so much like netscape, they act so much like netscape... 
they must be netscape... but I am not currently sitting on a damned
pile of history...  I can tell you that if the current tables were
completely scrapped and new specs designed ... they would have a lot of
things in difference...

Received on Tuesday, 24 September 1996 23:31:25 UTC