- From: SHARPE, Ian <Ian.SHARPE@cambridge.sema.slb.com>
- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 15:56:43 -0000
- To: "WAI (E-mail)" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
I still haven't found an easy to use and set up table using CSS to handle form layout for example. I have found some but they're a bit messy in comparison to a table IMHO (see http://css.nu/articles/table-in-css.html#Tbl1 for example). I think it's helpful to provide summary information about the form being display in the table even though the table is only being used for layout. Inddeed, you could argue that it is always more helpful to provide summary information even if the table is only being used for layout. Ideally it would be nice to have a table type attribute or something but I would be happier to see the summary attribute being used to at least explain it's purpose. Unless we standardardize the text to be used in the summary for layout tables, eg "layout table: additional information" this would mean validation tools wouldn't be able to identify whether the table was being used for layout or not but if you know it is only a table layout then you can ignore the warning surely. As far as adding title text to each cell aren't we going to be possibly confusing the problem by offering to much information? The summary attribute in conjunction with headers etc for complex data tables seems to be sufficient to me. OK, I inadvertantly send this originally to Charls who kindly replied as follows but I wanted to send it to the list anyway. Here's Charls's reply: Was this for the group? I got it privately. (Feel free to forward my response). Well, although making real tables should of course be done in HTMl by using table elements and all the associated bits and pieces, the stuff you have there rendered nicely in MOzilla 1.2 for Mac OS X. iCab doesn't handle floats, so linearised it (Amaya would do the same thing I guess, but I didn't test it yet). If I was trying to replicate the kind of form where there are two columns, with the left hand one being labels, right-justified and the right hand one being text inputs left-justified I would use inline spans with a width to try and make them behave right. (Hmm. I suppose you could use divs as well, like you do in your example). Either way, I can think of worse things than the raggedy look that non-compliant browsers will give - things that cause real problems. Another approach would be to use RDF annotations for tables that are layout tables. This would potentially take the information out of the page (although you could also use meta elements to include it, and provide an automated way of stripping that to put it on the web as RDF, via a very simple XSLT). At that point you can start by defining your own property for a layout table, and simply write some RDF to relate it to another such property if you find one, so that until one of you decides to use the other person's property there is information that can be used to match the two - also providing backwards compatibility. Although I don't know of any current validation or repair tools that are currently equipped with a complete general-purpose RDF parser, I know that these are coming (in part because I have some students at work on one, an in part because the use of things like EARL makes it an obvious direction to be moving in order to use other people's validation results in your repair tool). Cheers Ian -----Original Message----- From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org] Sent: 08 November 2002 09:33 To: Kerstin Goldsmith Cc: wai Subject: Re: layout tables Well the way I do it is by not using tables just for layout purposes. Really simple (but not entirely true - I do use a tool for presentations that is supplied to me and gets maintained and regularly updated by other people. That uses a table to put some buttons on the page. I used to maintain my own version, but it got too hard to keep up). There have been discussions before about getting people to use summary="layout table" (so should spanish tools look for summary="solo maquetacion" or what?) or some similar mechanism. It would also be possible to use a profile to identify this. It seems like standardising ways of doing this and then getting that implemented in tools is a lot of work compared with just not using tables for layout, from my perspective. Chaals On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Kerstin Goldsmith wrote: >Has anyone come up with a way to standardize on signaling that a table >is being used for layout purposes only? When we run our documentation >through our accessibility checking utility, we have told folks to add a >null SUMMARY attribute to their tables, and our checking utility >recognizes this as a signal that the table need not be checked for >association between headers and cells, or for header markup itself. Is >anyone else standardizing on this, or are folks using SUMMARY="This is a >layout table?" Or some such variation? It seems that the SUMMARY="" >makes sense in the same way that null ALT attributes work for decorative >graphics, no? > >Is anyone interested in standardizing on such a thing, so that all ERTs >(Evaluation and Repair Tools) can be looking for the same thing? > >Cheers, >-Kerstin Goldsmith > > -- Charles McCathieNevile http://www.w3.org/People/Charles tel: +61 409 134 136 SWAD-E http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe ------------ WAI http://www.w3.org/WAI 21 Mitchell street, FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia fax(fr): +33 4 92 38 78 22 W3C, 2004 Route des Lucioles, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France _________________________________________________________ This email is confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SchlumbergerSema. 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Received on Monday, 11 November 2002 10:57:36 UTC