[Wikipedia-l] What a wiki table syntax needs to do to work with current table layouts

[tarquin]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>But here is the rub; any wiki syntax that is enacted
>will need to have nested tables, the ability to have
>embedded images, lists and heading color fill 
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That nested sub-table on Owl could be done with some clever CSS, I 
should think, with row-group setting no borders and some colspan properties.
Nesting images would be a case of letting the parser read a link to the 
image inside the markup -- it would be expected to read '' and ''' so 
not much extra there.
Colours and fills: CSS again.
If the format of that species table is always going to be the same -- 
same number of rows and columns, the CSS can set all those things. The 
wiki markup just needs a way of identifying the table type: 
[[table:species]].

If the sub-table part might need a different number of lines, then some 
sort of marker within the table would be needed.
However, it would be better to have abstract markers, ie [[row:Genera]], 
leaving the specifics of *what* the colour is, etc, for the 
[[table:species]] page to define.

The potential problem with CSS is browser support. :-(