- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 07:06:48 +0100 (BST)
- To: www-style@w3.org
> I think this text is too restrictive. CSS 2.1 should allow a > UA to consider all rows and make the table border wide enough > to not cause any border to spill into the margin area. My understanding is that CSS 2.1 is intended to document what is currently, and interoperably, implemented, not as a place to propose new features. CSS3 is the place for innovation. If there are not two or more existing, interoperable implementations, a feature should not be in CSS 2.1. There is also an issue that there is a strong lobby to eliminate all user agent discretion in rendering, so that authors don't need to be able to read and understand standards and can just test on the current market leader and still get close layout control across all CSS browsers. I think this is unfortunate, as being able to specify that certain features are implementation dependent is a powerful mechanism for enabling innovation, but it is probably necessary in the current environment, where auhors don't read standards. (This is really for the benefit of current non-market leaders, as they have to achieve this level of compatibility whether or not the standards dictate it, so as not to reduce their market share.) Note that considering all rows is not an option for fixed table layouts, which, though very underused, are probably the right thing to use on many tables, particular where table is being abused for layout. The whole point of fixed table layouts is that rendering can start as soon as the the first row arrives and no subsequent fix up is required, i.e. incremental rendering.
Received on Friday, 4 August 2006 07:00:38 UTC