[whatwg] Table integrity and conformance
Ian Hickson
ian at hixie.ch
Mon Oct 23 11:31:30 PDT 2006
On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, Henri Sivonen wrote:
> >
> > Should one expect HTML table row/column integrity to become an HTML5
> > conformance requirement?
>
> I'd appreciate some indication on what I should expect in this area,
> i.e. whether it makes sense to prototype a table integrity checker based
> on HTML 4 forms.
I'm not planning on actually speccing tables for a while (but maybe I'll
get to it by the end of the year), which is why I haven't replied to your
last e-mail yet.
I think it would be good to require table integrity. Specifically I think
overlapping cells would be a MUST NOT. I don't think there's a problem
with missing table cells at the end of rows (i.e. a ragged table is fine).
I think cells extending (via colspan/rowspan) into columns or rows that
contain no cells other than extended cells should be at least a SHOULD
NOT, maybe a MUST NOT.
I don't know whether we'll keep the requirement that TFOOTs be above
TBODYs. COLGROUP span="" will be illegal if the COLGROUP has COLs. COLs
and COLGROUPs will probably have a SHOULD NOT requirement about spanning
into columns with no actual cells.
And the SHOULD NOTs will probably be MUST NOTs.
headers="" will have a MUST requirement to point to TH elements in the
same table, and will probably only be allowed on TDs. scope="" will
probably only be allowed for THs. Maybe it should be REQUIRED for THs that
aren't in obvious locations (first row, first column, or whatever).
It might be interesting to have some sort of testing with the "axis"
attribute too, or maybe we should drop it. (Indeed maybe we should drop
some of the others, too.)
If you do do this, I expect your experience with writing the conformance
checker will be a large influence on what the spec end up saying.
On a related note, a potentially interesting feature of a conformance
checker would be to output the document outline so that a human can check
that that is correct.
HTH,
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
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