CSS Table Column Spanning for XML

It does not seem that CSS2 define a method for rendering column or row spans
for tables when applied to XML.

>From CSS2, Section 17.5:
Although CSS2 doesn't define how the number of spanned rows or columns is
determined, a user agent may have special knowledge about the source
document; a future version of CSS may provide a way to express this
knowledge in CSS syntax.

A solution could be to introduce spanrow and spancol properties into CSS as
illustrated in the following example:

	<?xml version="1.0"?>
	<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="tbl.css"?>
	<TABLE>
	<ROW>
	  <CELL>1 </CELL>
	  <TALLCELL>2</CELL>
	  <CELL>3</CELL>
	  <CELL>4</CELL>
	</ROW>
	<ROW>
	  <WIDECELL>5</CELL>
	  <WIDECELL>6</CELL>
	</ROW>
	</TABLE>

	TABLE {
	  display:table;
	}
	ROW {
	  display:table-row;
	}
	CELL {
	  display:table-cell;
	  border-style :solid;
	}
	TALLCELL {
	  display:table-cell;
	  border-style :solid;
	  spanrow :2;
	}
	WIDECELL {
	  display:table-cell;
	  border-style :solid;
	  spancol :2;
	}

Regards,

Kevin


-----Original Message-----
From:	Rogers, Kevin 
Sent:	Tuesday, 29 August 2000 14:11
To:	'www-style@w3.org'
Subject:	CSS Table Column Spanning for XML

In HTML column spanning of tables is implemented by the COLSPAN attribute
for the TD element.

In XML table rendering is not controlled by element attributes, but is
controlled by the CSS style sheet.

Neither the XML nor CSS standards seem to include any facilities for
rendering tables that include column spanning. All the examples seem to only
cover regular tables that have the same number of columns in each row.

There is limited support for rendering XML tables. Mozilla provides some
support. However, there seems to be an inherent limitation in the standards
that would prevent implementation of column spanning by a browser.

Is there a means for rendering XML tables with CSS that include column
spanning?

Regards

Kevin Rogers

Received on Thursday, 7 September 2000 04:13:59 UTC