- From: Jason White <jasonw@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU>
- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:30:46 +1100 (AEDT)
- To: HTML Guidelines Working Group <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
I concur with Daniel's comments. In fact, the HTML 4.0 specification provides a default algorithm which is to be applied whenever explicit HEADERS and SCOPE attributes are not included. For the sake of simplicity, should we recommend (as a helpful, not a required guideline) that HEADERS and SCOPE be introduced in all cases, and also make it clear that HEADERS and SCOPE are required whenever the algorithm would not properly identify the headers associated with each data cell? Stated differently, the recommendation would be that authors include HEADERS and SCOPE just to ensure that the user agent will render the table correctly, but these are only really necessary where the algorithm detailed in the HTML 4.0 specification would otherwise fail. The two sections dealing with the use of tables for layout purposes can be collapsed into one, perhaps with two separate guidelines: (1) required, do not misuse tables to generate columns of text; (2) recommended, do not use tables for layout purposes at all, but take advantage of style sheet positioning instead.
Received on Tuesday, 24 February 1998 17:30:55 UTC