> If there is no matching character in the text in question, the
> alignment defaults are inherited from the enclosing element.
> For <tab> the behaviour in this situation is currently unspecified.
It is common in my experience to have a column of figures where one
of more does not have a fractional part and hence no 'matching
character'. In that case at least, the expected behavior would be
to pretend that the decimal point was to the immediate right of
the units position.
I would argue that <tab> behavior be defined in this situation. *AND*
I believe the natural handling would be as described above. If we feel
compelled to provide an option here then perhaps align="char iright"
(implied right) and "char ileft" would cover the cases?
Dave Morris