I don't understand why this would be distracting... It seems a very
useful feature of an electronic table. Nonetheless, I agree with
Gavin... it should not be part of the standard (but neither should we
defeat the possibility of implementing it). An opportunity for
browser implementors to add value, as long as it requires no extensions
to the markup to do so.
It's probably hard to implement in a general way. (Jeff, Yuri... Does
the ICADD markup standard for tables help at all here?).
stu