[CSS2.1] Column property limitations

Hi,
Referring to section 17.3, I would like to know why the spec limits to only 4 (border, background, width, and visibility) the number of properties that can apply to the col and colgroup elements. What is the rationale/advantage to this limitation. It means that if I want to style a particular column with a particular font-family, for example, I have to resort to the cumbersome selectors:

#tableid tr > td:first-child
#tableid tr > td:first-child + td
#tableid tr > td:first-child + td + td

etc...

as opposed to simply #colid