Inconsistancy in HTML 4.01 Transitional DTD and specification

Greetings,

may I point your attention to
<URL: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/1999Feb/0027.html>

the date of said post is 1999-02-09, pointing out the apparent
inconsistancy between table cell widths as defined in the HTML 4.0
spec and the HTML 4.0 Transitional DTD.

reading through the proposed HTML 4.01 specification and Transitional
DTD I find that this inconsistancy is still found.

the HTML 4.01 Transitional DTD defines TH/TD as:

<!ATTLIST (TH|TD)                      -- header or data cell --
[snip]

width       %Pixels;       #IMPLIED  -- width for cell --

[snip]
>

the entity %Pixels is still defined as:

<!ENTITY % Pixels "CDATA" -- integer representing length in pixels -->

but the specification says:

    width = pixels [CN]

where "pixels" is defined as:

    1.Pixels: The value (%Pixels; in the DTD) is an integer that
      represents the number of pixels of the canvas (screen,
      paper). Thus, the value "50" means fifty pixels.

but, since the transitional DTD uses CDATA instead of NUMBER even _this_
validates, even though the specification should be clear that only pixel
values are allowed:

    <td width="anythinggoesinhere!">

do I have any hope of seeing this changed?  it's fairly difficult to try
to convince newcomers that percentage widths in table cells is incorrect
when it validates.



Morten!

--

Received on Friday, 12 November 1999 08:40:00 UTC