mobileOK: Proposal for an erratum on TABLES_LAYOUT

Hello dormant Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group,

A user of the W3C mobileOK Checker reported on a Checker bug [1] related to TABLES_LAYOUT. Taking a deeper look at it, I realized that the comment matched old ISSUE-175 [2]:
  "Tables Layout - we should say td or th not just td."

When it's "just td", TABLES_LAYOUT-2 gets triggered when a table features one header column and one column of data, such as:

  <table>
   <tr>
    <th>Header</th>
    <td>Data</td>
   </tr>
   [...]
  </table>

The minutes of the 9 November 2006 call [3] (minutes are member-only because the group was still operating in member-only mode at the time) report that the group resolved:

  "RESOLUTION: in tables layout, we should say td or th not just td, and close issue-175."

As far as I can tell, this resolution has never made it to the spec, which only mentions "td" elements:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/#TABLES_LAYOUT

I propose to add the following erratum to the mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 Recommendation to clarify that the intent of the group is for the test to check table "cells" which can either be represented as "td" or "th" elements.

-----
Entry number: ED-3
Creation date: 02 September 2011
Section referred to: 3.23 TABLES_LAYOUT

Description of the problem
  The TABLES_LAYOUT test checks table cells. In HTML, table cells may be represented as "th" or "td" elements. The current wording suggests to take only "td" elements into account. This is not the intent of the group.

Correction
  The TABLES_LAYOUT test should rather read:
  [[
  For each table element:
   If it contains at most one tr element, FAIL
   If no tr element contains more than one td or th element, FAIL
   For each nested td or th element:
    If the element contains only an image (or equivalent object) whose actual dimensions are 2x2 or less, FAIL
  ]]
----

What do you think?

Unless I hear objections by end of next week (9 September 2011), I will incorporate this erratum in the errata of the mobileOK Basic Tests specification.

Thanks,
Francois.


[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-mobileok-checker/2011Sep/0001.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/BPWG/Group/track/issues/175
[3] http://www.w3.org/2006/11/09-bpwg-minutes#item01

Received on Friday, 2 September 2011 10:11:02 UTC