Re: HTML table model suggestion

Paul Grosso (paul@arbortext.com)
Fri, 31 Mar 95 06:51:20 EST

> From: Bert Bos <bert@let.rug.nl>
>
> - COLSPAN is relative, whereas NAMEEND is absolute, the former is
> therefore both easier to write and to maintain. And moreover,
> COLSPAN makes is impossible to specify illegal values (a cell that
> ends before it starts!?)

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