Since COLSPECs can be given "logical" names via the colname attribute,
and NAMEST and NAMEEND can reference these names, an advantage of this
over an explicit COLSPAN number is that one can add an intervening
column and still have the span run from the start column to the end column
without changing the spanning specification. That is, there is a level
of logical indirection here that adds some robustness when doing certain
editing operations on the table.
paul
Paul Grosso
VP Research, ArborText, Inc.
and
Chief Technical Officer, SGML Open
Email: paul@arbortext.com