RE: [css-tables] repeating table headers and footers

> > I added some placeholder in the spec, feel free to provide alternatives:
> > https://drafts.csswg.org/css-tables-3/#fragmentation
> 
> As far as pages are concerned, the spec text seems like a good start to me,
> but I'd suggest switching from SHOULD to MUST. For pretty much everything
> in the table spec we should strive for MUST.

Good call. Greg and I will update to MUST.


> > From what I have seen, browsers do not repeat headers/footers in
> > multi-columns.
> > http://codepen.io/FremyCompany/pen/YwbOMM
> 
> 
> For multicol, as far as I can tell:
> - IE+Edge / Chrome / Safari don't repeat
> - Print formatters do repeat (Vivliostyle doesn't as of now, but we're planning
> to, unless this discussion convinces us it's a bad idea).
> - Firefox doesn't count, since it doesn't fragment tables across columns at all.
> 
> CSS Regions don't have enough implementations to be worth looking at what
> "everybody" does when fragmenting tables there.
> 
> Despite the current lack of browser support for repeating table
> headers/footers in multicol, I'd argue the spec still should ask for repetition
> everywhere:
>  - I don't think the distinction between different types of fragmentainers is
> justified
>  - Multicol usage on the web is still low enough that I don't expect compat
> problems
>  - Multicol in paged media is used more often, and UAs focused on paged
> media do repeat.
>  - Minimizing the difference between "CSS for print" and "CSS for screen" is
> good.

Given no browser does it, I feel pretty confident we should not put that in the spec. 

I see some value in repeating the headers, and that seems reasonably easy to do when fragmentainers have the same width, acceptably difficult when they don't. However, I am pretty confident repeating footers is both difficult to implement and not very useful in non-page mode; correct me if I am wrong but I have the impression footers are more-often-than-not used for sums (which have little value in being repeated) or to have a bottom-copy of the header (which is relatively fine to skip it if we repeated the headers already).

I think we should raise the issue in a table-spec-breakout session in the future, with the following options:
- Statu quo (repeating does not have to occur in non-page fragmentainers)
- User agents may repeat headers and/or footers when fragmenting
- User agents should repeat headers when fragmenting
- User agents should repeat headers and footers when fragmenting

Anything beyond "should" makes me uncomfortable. I am personally leaning towards 1 and 3.

Received on Tuesday, 23 February 2016 02:01:38 UTC