Re: [css-tables] repeating table headers and footers

> On Feb 7, 2016, at 16:09, Greg Whitworth <gwhit@microsoft.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Greg,
>> 
>> Does the mail I am replying to count as filing the issue of repeated table
>> headers / footers against your new table spec, or do you want me to file it
>> again separately?
>> 
>> - Florian
> 
> Yes this is fine, I'm pushing up an issue page right now and yours in the only one that I've pulled from comments at the moment. That said, I'll reply below with what we discussed in person to your suggestions below for archiving.

Thanks.

>>> On Jan 20, 2016, at 22:21, Florian Rivoal <florian@rivoal.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> When a table is fragmented over several fragmentainers (pages,
>>> columns...) should table headers and footers be repeated?
>>> 
> 
> Francois and I will add a new section and test for this under table fragmentation.

Thanks.

> We currently do **not** want to add any additional feature to the current specification. The reason for this is our first goal is to have a foundational specification that any UA can go and fix bugs against. At the point that we feel we have a stable table specification and this is on its way to CR, we'll consider features for L4.

Understandable. I think the switch could be useful, but it is certainly not critical, and the interop work you're taking on is absolutely more important.

>>> Yet another alternative would be to have one property instead of two, and
>> rely on selectors to select headers or footers.
>>> 
>>> And we could possibly make that single property apply to regular table row
>> groups in addition to table header groups and table footer groups, and have
>> the initial value be auto, which computes to repeat on header and footer
>> groups, and to no-repeat on regular table row groups.
>>> 
>>> Or some other variation.
>>> 
>>> Summary:
>>> 
>>> 1) Can we agree table headers and footers must be repeated by default
>> when the table spans a fragmentation break?
> 
> We'll test this and spec the most interoperable behavior, and if there is none we'll spec the most sane behavior that is currently being shipped by a UA (to ease on web compat).

I believe you'll find that repeating the table headers/footers across fragmentainers is not universally interoperable, but is the most commonly implemented behavior (especially if you take pagination-focused UAs into account as well) and the sanest / most useful.

If you come to a different conclusion, we'll have something to talk about.

 - Florian

Received on Monday, 8 February 2016 00:41:36 UTC