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

[tarquin]

Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:

>It doesn't matter WHAT the actual
>coding is if the user can write [[table:taxonomy]] or [[table:elements]]
>or [[table:other]] or whatever at the top of their data and have that
>particular formatting applied to their basic table data. 
>

Exactly. Using something like [[table:elements]] means that:
* the default stylesheet can have Mav's colours -- they're nice :)
* a stylesheet aimed at blind users can skip the colours, and apply 
voice emphasis, for example
* a stylesheet for the colour blind or partially sighted can skip the 
colours too and use text-underline for example
* further stylesheets can do something else

And people who want to write articles don't need to worry about getting 
the colours right.

Something like [[table:city_information]] is easy on the user. You need 
to look it up, the same way you look up naming conventions sometimes. 
But once you have that, it guarantees that all pages that use it will 
have the same look. (content is the most important thing -- but if we're 
going to have formatting, it may as well be consistent)

Much as [[image:foo]] either points to the image file, or to a wiki page 
with information on the image, so could [[table:something]] either 
format the table, or point to a page where that set of styles can be 
edited. (though I must confess, I really don't understand how [[image:]] 
and [[media:]] links work.)