text-align property for columns (once again)

Hello.

I've read a number of discussion on the topic, especially the nice
posting on http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1070385285 .

I think that whatever is the mechanism used for the width, border,
background and visibility properties, it can be applied also for the
text-align.

Moreover, as table should be used for tabular data presentation, the
current definition gives more descriptive power to rows over columns.
Which is an arbitrary decision (possibly driven by a western-centric
view of text reading/writing: by rows, left to right, top to bottom).
Accordingly on how tabular data are arranged it can make perfect sense
to define a style by column rather than by rows.
Like when you put items or events by row and their properties by column.

We have already got rid of some western-centric limitations with the
(horizontal) "direction" property.
(We still lack the vertical direction, though!)
So, why not doing the same with tabular data flow, by rows or by
columns?

Received on Monday, 6 April 2009 09:28:17 UTC