Re: ROWSPAN issues with TFOOT (PR#238)

>Your issue has been added to the HTML Working Group Voyager Issue Tracking
>System.

Hmm, 8 months.  Nice turnaround.  I take it this is a relatively new
working group?

>If you have further information about this issue to report, please reply to
>this message so that the additional data can be automatically attached to the
>original query.

I have a followup message I received almost two months after that report.
It follows:

>Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 15:35:10 -0500
>From: Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
>Organization: W3C - World Wide Web Consortium
>X-Accept-Language: fr,it
>To: "G. James Berigan" <www-html@war-of-the-worlds.org>
>CC: www-html-editor@w3.org
>Subject: Re: ROWSPAN issues with TFOOT
>
>"G. James Berigan" wrote:
>
>>I've been trying to elicit comment about this issue in both
>>www-html@w3.org and comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, but no one seems
>>to be willing to comment on it.  I hope you can comment on it or make
>>some kind of official stand on the issue as it impacts a program I'm
>>developing as well as the behavior of MSIE and the development of
>>Mozilla.[1]
>
>I'm sorry that your questions haven't met with replies earlier.
>
>>The issue where TFOOT must precede TBODY has caused some problems with
>>parsing ROWSPAN attributes.  Parsers today appear to parse the entire
>>table and then move the TFOOT to the end of the table.  This becomes a
>>problem when you have a ROWSPAN in a THEAD that extends beyond the bottom
>>of the TR rows in the THEAD and ROWSPANs in the TFOOT that extend beyond
>>the bottom of the TR rows in the TFOOT.  Current browser behavior has the
>>spans past THEAD rows spanning into TFOOT rows and into TBODY rows, as
>>well as spans beyond TFOOT rows into TBODY rows spanning into TBODY.
>>Then, when the TFOOT is moved to the end of the table, you have a mess.
>>
>>I can only see one hard solution to this problem:  It needs to be stated
>>that ROWSPANs that extend beyond rowgroup boundaries are illegal markup
>>and that browsers must either stop rowspanning at such boundaries or
>>extend the number of rows in the rowgroup to account for the excessive
>>spanning and not span into other rowgroups below (or disjointedly above).
>>Either change would be in line with the new behavior of ROWSPAN=0 in HTML
>>4.01.
>
>It seems to me obvious that if you specify a rowspan of greater than one
>on a cell in the last row, that this is an error. (This is not stated
>explicitly in section 11.2.6.1 [1], which only talks about overlapping
>cells). It would also seem to me that this error condition would also
>apply to the last row of any row group. The number of rows in a table is
>given by the number of TR elements; refer to section 11.2.1 ("Note that
>the number of rows in a table is equal to the number of TR elements
>contained by the TABLE element."). Therefore, I would also propose that
>it's an error to specify a rowspan > 1 in the last row of any row group.
>
> - Ian
>
>[1]
>http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/tables.html#h-11.2.6.1
>[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/tables.html#h-11.2.1
>
>> The issues can become extremely hairy when the page then attempts to hide
>> rowgroups with CSS and ECMAscript, including ROWSPANning across TBODY
>> boundaries, which is why I think this restriction needs to be applied to
>> all rowgroups.  The CSS/ECMAscript issue may also be a problem for
>> COLSPANning across COLGROUPs, but is not as dire an issue.
>>
>> The sections are (row groups) 11.2.3, (colgroups) 11.2.4.1, and (spanning
>> in general) 11.2.6.1.
>>
>> [1] See <http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/html/span-vs-group.html>
>
>--
>Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
>Tel:                         +1 831 429-8586
>Cell:                        +1 917 450-8783

I generally understood that, while the specification did not say anything
one way or the other, it is generally considered an error to span a row
across a rowgroup boundary.  IMO, it should equally be an error to span a
column across a colgroup boundary, even though the error is not as clearly
catastrophic as with crossing tfoot.

I understand that the Mozilla project took the stance that rowspanning will
terminate at the rowgroup boundary.  I seem to recall the last development
version of Mozilla I checked demonstrated that solution when presented with
that markup.
-- 
         ,=<#)-=#  <http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/>
    ,_--//--_,
 _-~_-(####)-_~-_  "Did you see that Parkins boy's body in the tunnels?" "Just
(#>_--'~--~`--_<#)  the photos.  Worst thing I've ever seen; kid had no face."

Received on Thursday, 28 September 2000 00:40:41 UTC