Re: table headers - clear description of problem

2008/8/29 Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>:
>
> On Aug 26, 2008, at 18:53, Gez Lemon wrote:
>
>> This can sometimes be overcome (if there are no totals or
>> other aggregate data that usually go in the last columns) by
>> reordering the columns, but using conceptual headers marked up as tds
>> with headers/id to create the association allows analysts to order the
>> columns how they want.
>
> Isn't the markup abusing the semantics of HTML if cells that are
> conceptually header cells aren't marked up as <th>?

The cells contain data, so should be marked up with <td>.

> Why not mark all the header cells as <th> and enable hierarchical headers by
> allowing a <th> cell to point to another <th> using the headers attribute?

At the moment, nested headers aren't allowed. If the spec is changed
so that they are allowed, I wouldn't want header elements in the
middle of a data table, as the header wouldn't apply to the row or
column it's in, but a conceptual header for the cells that reference
it. Allowing the headers attribute to reference a td is logical,
simple, and it works in current implementations.

Gez


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