Re: DOCBOOK: Re: [docbook-tc] DocBook Technical Committee MeetingMinutes:17 Dec 2002

[Jirka Kosek <jirka at kosek dot cz>]

Paul Grosso wrote:

> Done:
> http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-tc/200212/msg00003.html

> Both models have <thead>, <tfoot>, and <tbody>.  In the HTML case,
> the content model for each is (tr+) and in the CALS case, the content
> model for each is basically (row+).  So the content model in the union
> DTD module for all three is basically:
>
>  (tr+ | row+)
>
> So that is one point of ambiguity where someone could mistakenly have,
> say, a thead in a CALS table containing tr+ instead of row+.  I believe
> this is really the ONLY point of potential content model mixing.
> 
> ...
> 
> I still feel we would be doing DocBook users a service to allow them
> to have both CALS and HTML tables in a document, and I do not feel
> the above issues--which we would prohibit via the documention but
> could not prohibit via the DTD--are so problematic as to cause us to
> forbid the use of HTML tables.

The problem is that tr/row ambiguity will confuse also XML editors. They
will offer you both elements as possible content of thead/tbody.
Currently there is only one element which many editors will insert
automatically for you. This is mostly tool issue, but quite important
IMHO. I'm also not sure whether WYSIWYG editors like Epic and XMetal are
able to dynamically recognize between CALS and HTML table models.

What about adding HTML tables as module similar to SVG/MathML/HTML forms
module?

<html:table xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";>
  <html:tbody>
    <html:tr>
      <html:td>A</html:td>
      <html:td>A</html:td>
    </html:tr>
  </html:tbody>
</html:table>

If we don't want to be so verbose, we can also do smth. like:

<html:table xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";>
  <html:tbody xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";>
    <tr>
      <td>A</td>
      <td>A</td>
    </tr>
  </html:tbody>
</html:table>

But problems is, that content of cell which can possibly contain DocBook
markup won't be in right namespace in that case. 

No good solution but I personally doesn't like idea of merging CALS and
HTML tables into one element very much.

							Jirka

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  Jirka Kosek  	                     
  e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz
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