Re: [CSS3-tables] proposal for table-row-start display value

On 20 Feb 2009, at 17:13, Giovanni Campagna wrote:

> Mmm... why should you turn everything into tables?
>
> If what you need is a table-like layout (but not a real table, with
> captions, row-groups, columns and column-groups), what you probably
> need is Template Layout:

I think you are confusing what CSS Tables _should_ be used for. With  
the arrival of IE8, all four major browsers support the CSS Table  
Model and there are definite use cases for the CSS Tables outside of  
layout (a Calendar view, for example). Granted many authors are now  
using CSS Tables for layout (which I personally disagree with), but  
that's another story entirely...

If on the other hand, you want to utilize CSS Tables for layout, then  
there are currently more than enough different values to do so, but I  
don't think Tab Atkins Jr just had layout in mind when he wrote this  
post.

>
> Very simply:
> dl {
> display-model: "a b";
> }
> dt {
> position: a; /* or slot(a); or move-to: a; or float: slot(a); if you
> rember that discussion about css3-gcpm */
> }
> dd {
> position: b;
> }
>
> This works for definition lists, dialogues, the header - list example
> you provided, and avoids additional table processing rules and display
> values, allowing also additional exstensibility (why if you deemed the
> content more important than the header and wanted the latter after the
> former in non-styled content?)
>
>
> Giovanni
>
> 2009/2/19 Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>:
>> Proposal
>> ========
>> Add a new display value, "table-row-start", to the CSS3 Table module.
>>
>> An element with display:table-row-start will be rendered identically
>> to an element with display:table-cell, except that an anonymous
>> table-row block will be created around it, starting just before the
>> element and containing all consecutive table-cell siblings of the
>> element (but not table-row-start siblings).
>>
>> If an element with this display value has a parent with
>> display:table-row, this is instead treated as display:table-cell.
>>
>> Reasoning
>> =========
>> There are many instances where an author may have an essentially
>> linear stream of elements which they want to display as a table, and
>> it would be inconvenient/impossible to produce the appropriate nested
>> structure required to denote table rows in the traditional manner.
>>
>> One example is an HTML definition list, where each dt/dd pair should
>> be displayed as a separate row in a table.  This is currently
>> impossible to reproduce with the CSS table model.  The html5 dialog
>> element suffers from the same problem.
>>
>> Another example is a document with a number of headers and content
>> following each header, where each header and the following content
>> should be displayed as a table row.  This can be achieved within the
>> current CSS table model by wrapping each group in div (or section for
>> html5) tags, but only if you have access to the original HTML.
>>
>> Additional Notes
>> ================
>> table-row-end would of course be a reasonable alternative to this
>> proposal, but I believe that table-row-start is more intuitive, and
>> produces a better mapping to the processing of CSS tables.  An  
>> element
>> with table-row-end would generate a wrapping anonymous table-row  
>> block
>> around its *previous* siblings, which is sort of weird.
>>
>> It's possible for table-row-end to be an *addition* to this proposal
>> instead, in which case the anonymous table-row block would start just
>> before the table-row-start element and encompass all adjacent sibling
>> table-cell blocks, but end just after a table-row-end element if one
>> appears.  If there are any further table-cell elements past that,  
>> they
>> will be wrapped in a table-row as decreed by the existing algorithm.
>>
>> While this proposal significantly helps turn arbitrary markup into
>> tables, it's not yet complete.  In the second example given, this
>> proposal only helps if every top-level element should become a table
>> cell.  That is, the following markup:
>>
>>        <style>
>>        h1 { display: table-row-start; }
>>        * { display: table-cell; }
>>        </style>
>>        <h1>First header</h1>
>>        <p>foo</p>
>>        <p>bar</p>
>>        <h1>Second header</h1>
>>        <p>baz</p>
>>        <p>qux</p>
>>
>> Would render identically to:
>>
>>        <table>
>>          <tr>
>>            <td>First header</td>
>>            <td>foo</td>
>>            <td>bar</td>
>>          </tr>
>>          <tr>
>>            <td>Second header</td>
>>            <td>baz</td>
>>            <td>qux</td>
>>          </tr>
>>        </table>
>>
>> But it might be intended to render as:
>>
>>        <table>
>>          <tr>
>>            <td>First header</td>
>>            <td>
>>              <p>foo</p>
>>              <p>bar</p>
>>            </td>
>>          </tr>
>>          <tr>
>>            <td>Second header</td>
>>            <td>
>>              <p>baz</p>
>>              <p>qux</p>
>>            </td>
>>          </tr>
>>        </table>
>>
>> In order to address this, we might introduce some sort of
>> table-cell-start value (likely in conjuction with a table-cell-end
>> value, working similar to how I described table-row-end working in
>> conjunction with table-row-start).
>>
>>
>> ~TJ
>>
>>
>

Received on Friday, 20 February 2009 17:35:04 UTC