Re: Ems in tables

lee@sq.com
Sat, 25 Mar 95 18:57:09 EST

It seems to me that a perfectly simple and well-defined interpretation
of ems in table column widths is that they refer to ems at the start
of the table - i.e. the type size in use when <table...> was encountered.

The fact that if you use <FONT SIZE=999> in a Netscape table to get
absurdly large text, and havee a column 5 ems wide, the column won't get
wider, is I think irrelevant.

Any formatting rule that says that the width of the table depends on
the size of type inside the table, instead of the other way round, is
dangerous: I'd much rather be able to shrink the text by 1 or 2 points to
make it fit in a given width, than have to reformat the table because I
just discovered that the 15th row of the table has a larger type size in it,
and that means the entire column width has to be changed!

Lee (passing by...)