[CSS3-Values] Table cell inheritance

One of the problems that CSS has always had is that because of the way 
that the ineritance of values works, it has been impossible to specify 
in CSS some of the formatting done in HTML by attributes on the COL and 
COLGROUP elements.

I would like to suggest the adding of a new common property value: 
table-inherit that could be applied to any property except display-role 
and display.  This exclusion is because the behavior of this property 
value is dependent uppon the value of display-role.

Unless the display-role of an element is table-cell table-inherit would 
have the same effect as inherit.

If the display role of the element is table-cell then it would use the 
following algorithm.

1) If the property for the table-row that the table-cell belongs to has 
a specified value other than inherit, then the computed value of that 
property for the table-cell is the same as the computed value of the 
property for the table-row.

2) Else if the property for the table-row-group* that the table-cell 
belongs to has a specified value other than inherit, then the computed 
value of that property for the table-cell is the same as the computed 
value of the property for the table-row-group*.
(* If the table cell belongs to a table-footer-group or table-head-
group instead of a table-row-group, then that is what is used.)

3) Else if the property for the table-column that the table-cell 
belongs to has a specified value other than inherit, then the computed 
value of that property for the table-cell is the same as the computed 
value of the property for the table-column.

4) Else if the property for the table-column-group that the table-cell 
belongs to has a specified value other than inherit, then the computed 
value of that property for the table-cell is the same as the computed 
value of the property for the table-column-group.

5) Else if the property for the table that the table-cell belongs to 
has a specified value (including inherit), then the computed value of 
that property for the table-cell is the same as the computed value of 
the property for the table.

6) Else the computed value that property for the table-cell is the 
initial value of the property.

So what do you think, folks? Is this workable, or am I missing 
something essential here.

Received on Sunday, 25 May 2003 01:47:43 UTC