Re: table layout conformance (was: some conformance questions)

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From: "Ian Hickson" <ian@hixie.ch>
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2010 3:38 PM
To: "Daniel Glazman" <daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com>
Cc: "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>
Subject: Re: table layout conformance (was: some conformance questions)

> On Thu, 17 Jun 2010, Daniel Glazman wrote:
>> >
>> > "Tables must not be used as layout aids. Historically, some Web
>> > authors have misused tables in HTML as a way to control their page
>> > layout. This usage is non-conforming"
>>
>> Thanks for letting me know. I am then officially objecting to that last
>> sentence of this paragraph in the spec, and I want it to be removed.
>>
>
> There are generally speaking two ways to approach the problem of people
> misusing markup: either define that their documents mean something
> different than they think it means, or define that using the wrong markup
> is incorrect. When advocating good markup use, in my experience it is much
> easier to convince an author if you can point to a place in the spec that
> outright says that their document is invalid than if you have to convince
> them that their document means something different than they think. The
> latter is too "meta" for many authors. This is why the specification has
> these requirements.

Currently CSS does not provide features that allow to reproduce
pretty unique <table> layout mechanism.  Even close.

Here is a typical web page that is trying to avoid tables:
http://terrainformatica.com/w3/w3-front-page.png
As you may see this leads to data loss/inaccessible for human.

Another example is this page (search results):
http://www.google.ca/search?q=sciter
that contains at least three tables that are semantically
not required there.

So to speak about "people misusing markup" with respect of tables
in current state of CSS is just either cynical or just good wishes,
but for sure not conformance requirements.

-- 
Andrew Fedoniouk

http://terrainformatica.com

Received on Friday, 18 June 2010 07:49:04 UTC