Re: [office] use cases for "is-subtable" attribute

["Andreas J. Guelzow" <aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca>]

On Mon, 2007-09-07 at 16:15 +0200, Lars Oppermann wrote:
> Hi Dave,
> 
> Could you elaborate a bit more on the reasons why a nested table is a
> problem for access technology? From my (naive) point of view, it would
> appear somewhat more confusing to navigate a lot of spanned cells rather
> than entering a subtable.
> 
> For instance,
> 
> A1  C1   D1
> A2  C2   D2
> A3 B3 C3 D3
> 
> seems more confusing than
> 
> A1      B1     C1
> A2      B2     C2
> A3 B3.A1 B3.B1 C3
> 
> ... because the latter example gives you the context information so you
> don't lose the subtable semantics. Especially if there are more than
> just 3 columns (see Andreas' example).
> 
> It would be much appreciated if you could explain the reasons for the
> first representation _always_ being preferable to the second.

I think we should also point out that the implementation specific
display of split cells in OO creates more problems: If one splits B2
vertically, then moving down from C1 one moves to cells C1->D2->C3->...
That will confuse everybody. But of course the implementation specific
display has little to do with the file format specific storage, which in
my mind should preserve context.

Andreas

-- 
Andreas J. Guelzow, Professor
Dept. of Mathematical & Computing Sciences
Concordia University College of Alberta