"the default may be altered/set by the language content, as set by the
lang attribute on enclosing elements. The CHAR attribute overrides
this default within the context of the attributed element"
> That is indeed the idea. The spec says:
>
> "the default may be altered by the language content, as set by the
> lang attribute on enclosing elements."
>
> Note the use of "the default" here, as this is how the user agent can
> determine the default alignment character when the DP attribute is
> left out. Note also that I am proposing to rename DP to CHAR in the
> next revision to the HTML3 spec, along with several other changes
> to tables following discussings at the Danvers IETF.
>
> 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.
For the tab I can imagine wanting local control of the alignment
defaults. For example, I might want to tab align some numbers to a
decimal point (or a comma), but right align numbers without a
decimal (or comma), e.g:
12343,23
23.21
1221
In a table I am guessing that this can be controlled by setting
appropriate alignment defaults for the surrounding elements. However, in
a TAB the fallback alignment you want might be quite different from the
tabbing alignment of the surrounding element (a text paragraph with a left
alignment default, but containing TABbed numbers requiring CHAR or
right-alignment to tabs). Can this situation be easily dealt with in
the current tabbing model?
Ian