Re: ISSUE-155 counter proposal

Ian Hickson, Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:15:57 +0000 (UTC):
> On Wed, 23 Mar 2011, Sam Ruby wrote:
>> On 03/23/2011 12:00 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>>> 
>>> It seems apparent that non-CSS UAs should display a border on tables 
>>> automatically.
>> 
>> Any chance that the ISSUE-155 counter proposal could get updated to 
>> propose a change to the draft specification mention this explicitly?  
>> If not, would anybody be willing to propose a separate change proposal 
>> that does this?
> 
> You are of course encouraged to write a change proposal that proposes this 
> if you think it would be helpful, but it seems rather self-evident to me. 
> Just look in any book, tables are almost always rendered with borders.

Depending on what you mean by "are almost always rendered with 
borders", this is not true.

The border effect caused by <table border=1 > is rude and simplistic. I 
dare say that most tables in books are *not* that simplistic. They 
often use a border. Or rather: lines. But seldom on all sides of each 
cell. (And even more seldom do they create the double borders that the 
automatic CSS table-layout style causes.) For verification, I picked my 
dear book from 1920 on computus (time reckoning) as well as my (not so 
dear) HTML4 Unleashed from 1998.

Thus, it is pretty clear that @border's main purpose is not prettiness. 
As such, it doesn't quite deserve to be called 'presentational'. The 
other, border related table attributes, on the contrary (@frame, 
@rules), are clearly presentational (and has the effect of creating the 
kind of tables I saw in the above mentioned books!)

There is also nothing anti-CSS with border="1", as any CSS rule will 
override its effect.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 19:13:49 UTC