Re: TABLE

to follow up on what Dave Raggett said:
> 
> > The AXIS attribute in HTML can be used to group rows or columns
> > into related groups
> 
> This is misleading. [snip]

Thanks for pointing out this discrepancy in the way I said it.
I will edit that part.  How about:

   "The AXIS attribute in HTML can be used to associate table
cells with a conceptual category such as dates, expense catetories,
etc.  This can be done on the individual cell or indirectly by
an AXIS value on a header cell which describes a cell in the body
of the table."

<end substitution draft>

I was only thinking about the hierarchy part and the scenario
where the first level of grouping is accomplished by binding a TD
to one or more TH's by SCOPE or AXES and the AXIS attribute was
only used at higher levels in the hierarchy.  I agree we don't want
to give the idea that the capability is resricted to that.

The picture I am getting is that AXES and AXIS are used to link
from a value [nominally in a TD but de-facto in a TD or TH] to
a category of values.

	If the category of values is described by the contents of
	another cell [nominally a TH, but de-facto a TD or TH],
	the one included the ID of that other cell in the AXES 
	value of the current cell.

	If the category is not described by the contents of another
	cell, one has the opportunity to put one mnemonic identifier
	in the AXIS attribute of the current cell.

	If the category is a super-category of a category described
	in a table cell, then the above markup emanates from the
	category-describing cell for the sub-category.

It is unfortunate that AXIS only allows one value.  In practice we
do use multiple, overlapping sets of categories in grouping.

The example I found, motivated by a real table, is the matter that
the econometric data for the first quarter of 1996 is a part of
at least two wholes: 

	The four quarters of one year

	The multiyear series of first-quarter statistics

I don't have the capability to tie a cell or cell category two ways
to accomodate this with the single-entry limitation in AXIS.

-- Al

Received on Thursday, 16 October 1997 08:47:29 UTC