Re: Styling table columns--why so limited?

Dan Delaney wrote:
>
> Could someone please point me to a discussion of the rationale
> behind such limited style options for the colgroup and col elements?

That's because of the inheriance system of HTML, CSS, or two-dimensional
document trees in general.
If HTML build tables (alternatively) like this:

  <table>
    <col><td>A<td>B</col>
    <col><td>C<td>D</col>
  </table>

    A C
    B D

'col' could in theory inherit its declarations to the 'td's. In practice the
CSS table model isn't that generic and resembles the one from HTML closely
("row primary"). Perhaps therefore the CSS table model is missing column
counterparts for 'table-header-group' and 'table-footer-group'. I don't know,
whether it's planned to make "column primary" tables supported, and neither,
if it's at all possible to implement both at the same time.

> I'd like to know why the spec doesn't allow for something as
> important as "text-align" and other styles on those elements.

Column( group)s and all their children don't contain text, so what would be
the point?

Received on Monday, 29 March 2004 21:54:10 UTC