DP attribute - correct overrides?

Ian Graham (igraham@utirc.utoronto.ca)
Tue, 25 Apr 95 11:36:13 EDT

Hi --

I have a concern/question about the DP attribute -- (posted earlier in a
different format). Am I misreading the draft RFC?

Horizontal Tab -- DP attribute and ALIGN attributes (

The text says that the designated decimal point character can be altered
by the language content, as set by the lang attribute on enclosing
elements. Is this the best choice -- I would prefer that DP override
the existing language default. For example, when writing in a language
with a particular DP separator, I may very well want to override this
separator for tab-aligned information, such as:

* a period . for scientific numbers (overriding the language
specific separator)
* perhaps a special symbol for other data, for example
a h (used to separate hours/min in siderial notation --
e.g. 12h30), " for seconds,
* the dash for phone numbers....

Also -- what happens if you specify align=decimal, but there is no decimal
in the text to be aligned? Perhaps you should be able to specify a
default ordering in alignment, for example:

align=decimal,right

which would align to the decimal symbol, and in the absence of a decimal,
align to the right.

These concerns also apply to these attributes in TABLE elements.

Ian

--
Ian Graham ..................................... igraham@utirc.utoronto.ca
Instructional and Research Computing
University of Toronto