[whatwg] Quirks mode handling of rowspan="0"

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-09-03 3:11, Boris Zbarsky wrote:

> Per HTML5 spec, rowspan="0" should span to the end of the table section.

This was the case already in HTML 4.01, though it was implemented slowly 
and was not much known among authors.

> In any case, my suggestion is that in quirks mode, rowspan="0" not be
> supported.

Generally, attempts at defining "quirks mode" would mean making it an 
alternate mode and will not be successful due to the wide variation 
across browsers and versions. It's called "quirks" for a reason.

Specifically, as some browsers already support rowspan="0" in quirks 
mode, and some don't, you cannot ensure backwards compatibility no 
matter how you define it. For the bulk of legacy pages, it does not 
really matter, as they do not use such attributes. So the question is 
really what happens to newer pages where people may have used them after 
observing that some browsers support them. The current situation is 
inconsistent across browsers, but it does not help to change it; it 
could break existing pages written to work on browsers that support 
rowspan="0" in quirks mode.

Similar considerations apply to colspan="2".

Yucca