[Bug 15100] Right-aligning a numeric table column is much more work than it should be

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=15100

--- Comment #14 from Brian Lalonde <brian@webcoder.info> 2011-12-14 01:06:43 UTC ---
The columns I was talking about were for the URL I gave, not the simplified
test file I attached later.

I've attached the original (more complex) alignment challenge.

As you can see, the rowspans make selecting by sibling position (td + ... + td
or td:nth-child(n)) impossible.

The proposed future CSS selector :nth-col() could simplify this for situations
where CSS selectors may be applied, but there isn't really a way to add that to
a forum post or a wiki or other user-contibuted content (or CMS body content)
that only allows markup, so that reduces it's viability.

> To get that effect would need classes on each cell; a <col> attribute wouldn't work.

That depends on the browser (Opera and IE do align by column), but you are
correct, as a cross-browser solution, it fails. Which is my point. Decorating
each cell is a pretty suboptimal solution.


Since we are already decorating each cell, why not provide a semantic element
that at least provides a hint to the renderer as to the fundamental type of the
data. A semantic element would be far more concise (<tn> rather than <td
class=n>), and wouldn't require an external style rule to work.

Not only would this achieve the practical goals of reducing the size and
allowing the browser to align the column correctly, it might also allow for
more appropriate sorting of that column or other operations that require better
type awareness.

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Received on Wednesday, 14 December 2011 01:06:49 UTC