[WikiEN-l] Auto-Table-format ?

[WJhonson at aol.com]

Matt no, the problem is not in the *number* of rows or columns.
You are probably thinking about the situation where each Row starts with an  
identifier and then continues with column-cell-data directly related to that  
identifier.  Fine, there's no problem with that sort of table.
 
The problem to which I refer is where each cell is an independent-datum,  not 
tightly related to what row it's in, for example "List of important cities  
in California"  might be a five-column wide table (let's say) and the row a  
city appears in, is not relevant to the city itself, and each row does not have  
an identifier simply because the entire table is just a "list" but in tabular 
 form to save row-space.
 
That's a big run-on sentence.
The table is not a data-table (like a programmer), it's just a "list" but  
graphically structured as a table, because a table is the most efficient way to  
show the data, while a list proper would take up many rows of space, mostly  
white-space, which is not efficient and looks poor to the eye.
 
Imagine a list like "Apples, Bananas, Cherries...... Zebra" with dozens of  
elements, but instead of being comma-delimited, it's all put into say a 
6-column  table just for beautification.  Now add an element to the middle of the  
list somewhere.  You *dont* want the edge of the row to extend further  right, 
because that would be *ugly*.  What you want, is everything to shift  forward 
so that at most an extra row is created at the bottom, which would look  
normal, but not an extra column to the right which would look poor.
 
Will



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