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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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