One thing I never liked about HTML tables is that I have to mark both the beginning and the end of each cell, row, and table. I've never yet had the need for starting a new cell without closing the previous one or ending a row without ending the cell. Working with a typewriter and the TAB key, or with tables in a word processor, I just go to the next cell, I never have to both exit the current cell and enter the new one. When I write software that outputs HTML, I always create the following four functions: table() emits "<table><tr><td>" nextcell() emits "</td><td>" nextrow() emits "</td></tr><tr><td>" endtable() emits "</td></tr></table>" Parameters to these functions can set attributes to the emitted tags, if there is such need. Most suggestions here repeat the HTML/XML mistake of both opening and closing each cell and line. What you really need is the above four primitives. Forget XML. A table could then look like this: <table> '''Name''' <tab>'''Instrument''' <row> Bill Clinton <tab>Saxophone <row> Louis Armstrong <tab>Trumpet </table> Since <table> and </table> are required to match in pairs, you can even include a table in the cell of another table, if need be. <table> '''Name''' <tab>'''Instrument''' <row> Bill Clinton <tab>Saxophone <row> Louis Armstrong <tab><table>'''Age''' <tab>Instrument <row> 0-3 <tab>Drum <row> 3-10 <tab>Guitarr <row> 10- up <tab>Trumpet </table> </table> -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

On Sat, Aug 03, 2002 at 10:32:05AM -0400, The Cunctator wrote: Looks very understandable to me. Just a few minor remarks: - The style markup [[table:plant]] is very similar to something with a completely different meaning. Perhaps we should take Lee's suggestion here and use {{table:plant}} or even {table:plant} although I prefer to use double brackets for markup because single brackets are probably already in normal use somewhere. - Be careful with the indented lines because these now have the meaning of <pre>...</pre> in the current markup. - I don't if in CSS you can redefine a normal table rule as a header rule or a caption rule, but if you can the the [{ }] notation is superflous, and if you cannot then we probably need some extra notation for caption. - The CSS for table:plant can probably already determine the formatting of the nested table, so table:classifiction is probablu superfluous. Actually, there's no problem here if you refine this rule such that a table ends if a |] is not immediately followed by [| on this line or the next line. In that case you don't lose any flexibility at all. However, you would also have to adapt Lee's rule for defining a <DIV> section a little to allow empty rules in tables. -- Jan Hidders

Lars Aronsson wrote: Nope: tr, td, and th do not have to be closed. See: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/tables.html With _unbalanced_ tags, sure. With correctly structed tables with omitted close tags, they would be in blatant disregard of the standard if they barf. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)