Re: Styling table columns--why so limited?

On Friday, April 2, 2004, 3:44:43 PM, Ian wrote:


IH> On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, Dan Delaney wrote:
>>
>> I guess what it boils down to for me is this: in practical terms, Web
>> designers need to be able to use, on COL and COLGROUP, all the styles
>> they can use on TDs.

IH> The working group agrees; unfortunately no-one has yet suggested a
IH> practical solution to this problem. As I describe in:

IH>    http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=239130

IH> ...it is a problem with the entire way CSS works.

I would say it is a problem with the way SGML and XML work. Tables are
not treelike hierarchical structures. Attempting to model them as
trees means that some properties of a table are lost. Usually, the
fact that all cells are children of both a row and a column is the
aspect that is lost. So there are no columns in the data structure.

IH> I have yet to see a
IH> workable solution (though many people have tried, over the years, to
IH> develop solutions).

IH> So, please propose a solution!





-- 
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@w3.org
 Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 Member, W3C Technical Architecture Group

Received on Friday, 2 April 2004 09:32:54 UTC