Re: [docbook] strict versus transitional XHTML tables [was: DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 18 Mar 2003]

[Terrence Enger <tenger@iSeries-guru.com>]

At 06:52 2003-03-19 +0000, Colin Paul Adams <colin@colina.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>> "Tobias" == Tobias Reif <tobiasreif@pinkjuice.com> writes:
>
>    Tobias> Paul Grosso wrote:
>
>    >> I mean, if you're going to be black and white, you should argue
>    >> against table markup of any kind.
>
>
>    Tobias> I can't follow your logic here, at all.
>
>Me neither. A table is semantic markup - it that the marked-up content
>is 2-dimensional data, and should be presented as such.

Well, ...

The presentation of a table is typically 2-dimensional.  And paper and CRT
screens work well for 2-dimensional presentation.  And markup languages let
you express data in a 2-dimensional way.  And quite often this is really
useful.

But I suspect that the power and convenience of the available tools for
entering and presenting 2-dimensional data lead us to use this model even
when a higher-dimensional model would be more suitable.  The use of cells
spanning rows or columns is a sign that the data is bursting the seams of
the 2-dimensional model.

This is, alas, just a rant.  I have no specific proposal.  It will take a
person smarter than I am to show how to integrate database definition,
data, and query into a document.

Thank you, all, for letting me get this off my chest.

Terry.
iSeries programmer, available for contract programming.

>-- 
>Colin Paul Adams
>Preston Lancashire
>
>