[Bug 13770] New: Take back colspan="0" and rowspan="0" for TD/TH elements

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=13770

           Summary: Take back colspan="0" and rowspan="0" for TD/TH
                    elements
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: mtanalin@yandex.ru
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/tabular-data.html#dom-tdth-colspan

<<
The colSpan IDL attribute must reflect the content attribute of the same name.
The value must be limited to only non-negative numbers _greater than zero_.
>>

In HTML4, "colspan" and "rowspan" attributes of TD/TH elements has been allowed
to have zero value ("0"):
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#adef-colspan

This is very useful when column or row number is unknown in advance. It's
harmful to force web-editors to calculate column or row number manually while
browser could easily do this automatically.

There is a known rule in spec development: when there are two independent
implementations of a specification, then the specification status is promoted
to "recommendation" ("candidate" or "proposed").

But there ARE already two (well, 1.5) working independent implementations of
zero colspan/rowspan:

1. Firefox (both zero colspan and rowspan are fully working)

2. and Opera (supports rowspan="0" and does not support colspan="0").

So, zero value of colspan/rowspan is very good candidate to keep in HTML spec
and, moreover, to encourage rest browser vendors to implement this useful
feature as soon as possible.

There are no serious reasons to remove zero values of colspan/rowspan from the
HTML specification. It's not something "unimplemented at all", it's already
quite usably implemented and should be kept intact in the HTML spec.

Thanks.

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Received on Friday, 12 August 2011 23:45:15 UTC