Re: css layout should be symmetrical

Hello Ian,

On Wednesday, February 20, 2002 you wrote:

> Vadim Plessky wrote:

..

>> Some people assumed that 'table-cell', 'table-row', etc. should be used for 
>> HTML and XHTML as well.
>> To my best understandimng, this is wrong.
>> Tables in CSS should be used only with XML!

> That is incorrect. I am curious as to what gave you that impression?

That's not too hard to find...

  " [...] in HTML 4.0, the semantics of the various table elements
  (TABLE, CAPTION, THEAD, TBODY, TFOOT, COL, COLGROUP, TH, and TD) are
  well-defined. In other document languages (such as XML
  applications), there may not be pre-defined table elements.
  Therefore, CSS2 allows authors to "map" document language elements
  to table elements via the 'display' property. For example, the
  following rule makes the FOO element act like an HTML TABLE element
  and the BAR element act like a CAPTION element:

  [...] the table model consists of tables, captions, rows, row
  groups, columns, column groups, and cells.

  The CSS model does not require that the document language include
  elements that correspond to each of these components. For document
  languages (such as XML applications) that do not have pre-defined
  table elements, authors must map document language elements to table
  elements; this is done with the 'display' property. The following
  'display' values assign table semantics to an arbitrary element:
   [...]
  User agents may ignore these 'display' property values for HTML
  documents, since authors should not alter an element's expected
  behavior."

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/tables.html


IMO, this does not mean that table-properties *can't* be used in HTML
documents, but it seems clear that their inclusion in CSS2 was meant
to make it possible to achieve HTML-like tables with XML documents. It
was meant to change the display type of HTML elements to change the
their behavior. But there are 'may's and 'should's here, I don't see
any 'must's or 'must not's.


Greetings,
 Rijk                            mailto:rijk@iname.com

Mot du Jour:
Ignorance can be cured.  Stupid is forever.

Received on Wednesday, 20 February 2002 10:55:00 UTC