Re: tab-width specifications in HTML

Gavin Nicol (gtn@ebt.com)
Mon, 6 Feb 95 20:38:31 EST

>While tables can be used for vertical alignment, this can be inconvenient.
>For instance in a table caption, you might want a copyright message at
>the end of the caption to be right ajusted and in a different font. In this
>and similar circumstances, it is natural to use a "right tab".

While it is very alien to most, I tend to agree with Eric Naggum that
a "table" is nothing more than just an ordered collection of
information, and that too much emphasis is placed on mapping the
visual effects people expect tables to produce, onto a DTD. Using
stylesheets it should be possible to associate an arbitrary amount of
processing with each SGML element, which might include right
justification within the parent of it's left sibling.

>tab character. In many cases, where the document semantics are well defined,
>it would be better to leave the layout to the stylesheet. Where this isn't
>the case, we may still need some explicit control within HTML though.

Quite. This is the real art of DTD design: trying to make what theory
suggests usable by the people targetted. There is nothing worse that
being forced to use a model alien to you. Most people have a hard
enough time with the very concept of structured documents....