Re: text-align property for columns (once again)

On Apr 6, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 6:01 AM, Reg Me Please  
> <regmeplease@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> You started this email saying that you'd read Hixie's post on the
> subject.  That post explains perfectly why properties other than the
> four that are explicitly listed cannot be applied to <col>s.  There
> isn't a "mechanism" that is arbitrarily applied to width, border,
> background, and visibility that can just be extended to also work with
> text-align.

I disagree. Hixie's post describes why properties in general cannot be  
inherited from COL. It doesn't really say clearly why those four are  
exceptions. And the answer seems to be that they all can be applied  
fairly independently of the table-cells:

The background goes BEHIND the table-cell, so it is only seen if the  
table-cell is transparent and no inheritance is involved.
The width only specifies the MINIMUM cell width, but since the table- 
cell's width does the same thing, it completely overwrites the width  
specified in COL, with no inheritance involved.
Visibility:collapse hides the table-cell, is non-sensical for  
inheritance, and other values on visibility there have no effect.
Border is a special case as part of the unique conflict resolution  
that substitutes for getting the values from inheritance (with no such  
complicated inheritance-free value-passing methods being part of  
normal CSS). In theory, I don't see why a similar conflict resolution  
(namely step 4) could not be used for 'color' and 'text-align'.

HTML allows cell alignment to be specified as a COL attribute, so this  
is apparently something that goes on anyway outside of CSS-proper and  
is not insurmountable to allow special casing of alignment based on  
the COL's "style".