empty rows/cells, etc.

[Daniel Vogelheim <Daniel.Vogelheim@sun.com>]

Hi all,

I had a look at empty and incomplete table rows; in OOo Writer and Calc, 
and in Mozilla Browser and Composer. Briefly said, the result is that 
each application interprets empty and incomplete rows in a way 
consistent with how the application operates.

OOo Calc has the typical spreadsheet structure, where the document is a 
large (sort of infinite) table. Typically, the 'default' table extends 
significantly beyond the used area, and contains empty cells. Calc (like 
most spreadsheets) never abandons this table structure. Empty rows in 
the format introduce a default row (just as in an empty sheet), and 
incomplete rows are filled with empty cells (just like in an empty sheet).

All other applications have fixed size tables. Incomplete rows are 
basically rendered as if they had the necessary number of empty cells; 
same for empty rows. (Slightly more precise: A real empty cell has the 
default cell padding, while an implied empty cells doesn't get any 
padding.) An empty cell in Mozilla Navigator takes up no space, which 
means that an empty row has no height. In Writer and Mozilla Composer, 
an empty cell takes up the space of an empty paragraph, so that the user 
could just click into it and fill the empty cell. So the difference in 
this case appears not to be between HTML vs OOo format, but more between 
viewer and editor.


Well... I don't really have a change proposal, since teh above makes 
sense to me. I suggest that the spec have clear wording that empty or 
incomplete rows are allowed.


Sincerely,
Daniel