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Subject: Re: [docbook] DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 18 Mar2003


> > Six of eight members of the TC agree; they said they are "willing to
> > include XHTML tables in DocBook" [1].

A coalition of the willing.. sorry could not help myself ;)

> But it doesn't automatically mean that adding XHTML tables is good
> thing.

I am an old user of DocBook but I do not use DocBook in my daily work as
much as the experts on this list. I am an amateur. So this is an amateur
take on the discussion.

I have tried to follow the discussion but I know too little, and would
like to know more. Maybe there are more people on the list that are
confused.

I wanted to understand the subject so I turned to
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/doctype.html#s_doctype for more information
about xhtml tables.

A xhtml table has the following tags :
caption, col, colgroup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr

The CALS model is described in http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/a502.htm

A CALS table has the following tags :
table, tgroup, colspec, spanspec, thead, tfoot, tbody, row, entrytbl,
entry

The list below is collored by my stand for the old CALS model.
I openly admit that I do not know what the technical differences between
the two but maybe someone can explain it to us, the users.
I belive there more background to both models that I don't know of.

Pros for inclusion of HTML :
+ Easy for users already used to HTML tables to switch to DocBook

Cons for inclusion of HTML :
- Confusion on what tablemodel to use, two to maintain.
- Moving from <row> to <tr>, <entry> to <td> makes the table harder to
  read/code. tr or td does not say much.
- HTML tables are maybe easier for HTML people but for beginners it
  is rather hard to deal with all the <tr> <td>s. <row> <entry> makes more
  sense.
- People that learnt HTML should have it easy to move to CALS

Some questions :

Is it easier to express complex tables in HTML ?
(ok there are nice tools for HTML but I mean from a pure documenational
standpoint)
What is the strength/weekness of the table models from a more technical
perspective ?

I switched to DocBook from HTML, LaTeX and other tools to have a more
expressive semantical structure. That is why I have stuck with DocBook,
even though the tools to set it up have been hard to get working at times.
(switched to XML from SGML a bit too early maybe :) and still Fop
sometimes bites me)

Sorry if this raises points that are well know for everybody that eats XML
for breakfast, I just have an occational XML snack..

/Fred


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