Re: Status of Tables in HTML+?

Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>

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From: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Message-id: <9309091113.AA23376@manuel.hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Status of Tables in HTML+?
To: wmperry@banana.ucs.indiana.edu
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 93 12:13:15 BST
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Mailer: Elm [revision: 66.36.1.1]
Status: RO

Bill says:

> Just curious as to what the status of the table is in html+ after the
> W^5?

Following feedback from W^5 I propose to drop the <tb> element, andv to change
the table caption tag from <tt> to <tblcap> to avoid confusion with <tt> for
switching to a fixed pitch font in HTML. 

> I heard that most people were concerned with it taking two passes to
> parse a table.  Although this isn't a hideous problem (I have 
> rudimentary table support in my emacs browser), it would be nice not
> to have to do it. :)

I initially considered an attribute format for single pass rendering, but
found that it gets kinda complicated when you realise that you need different
formats for headers and data. Including just the number of colummns isn't
enough (and anyway it is cheap to work out).

The simple prepass mechanism is low cost and is only needed once,
since thereafter you use the cached info.

Dave Raggett