[Bug 24591] New: Make W3C HTML5 spec clearly and correctly state that table@border is obsolete & invalid (nonconforming)

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=24591

            Bug ID: 24591
           Summary: Make W3C HTML5 spec clearly and correctly state that
                    table@border is obsolete & invalid (nonconforming)
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: PC
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: HTML5 spec
          Assignee: dave.null@w3.org
          Reporter: mike@w3.org
        QA Contact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-admin@w3.org,
                    public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org

There's currently a bug in the W3C HTML5 spec which causes it to give the
impression to Web authors that the table border attribute is valid when in fact
it's not.

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/tabular-data.html#attr-table-border

This is internally inconsistent with other statements in the spec which make it
clear that "The only remaining presentational markup features in HTML are the
style attribute and the style element" and that all other presentational markup
features from previous versions of HTML are no longer allowed:

"presentational markup has been removed from HTML in this version. This change
should not come as a surprise; HTML4 deprecated presentational markup many
years ago and provided a mode (HTML4 Transitional) to help authors move away
from presentational markup; later, XHTML 1.1 went further and obsoleted those
features altogether.

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/introduction.html#presentational-markup

The table border attribute is presentational markup. So while the current W3C
HTML5 spec does clearly and correctly state that all other presentational
markup features are now invalid, it has a bug that makes the spec inconsistent
with itself and with current best practices by not clearly and correctly
stating that the table border attribute is invalid.

The existence of this table-border bug in the current spec appears to be the
result of a decision that was made for some reason in 2011 to accept a change
proposal despite the fact that the change proposal was introducing a bug that
made the spec inconsistent with its own requirements with regard to
presentational markup (and at odds with longstanding best-practice guidelines
existing for many years now that recommend using CSS instead).

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Apr/0377.html

Note that the current spec text is itself even in conflict with the
requirements in that decision, in that at some point language as introduced
into the spec stating that "The border attribute may be specified on a table
element to explicitly indicate that the table element is not being used for
layout purposes." when in fact neither the decision nor the original change
proposal make the border attribute valid for that purpose (nor did any previous
version of HTML state that as a purpose for the table border attribute).

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Received on Monday, 10 February 2014 05:25:32 UTC