RE: [dita] Explicit Prohibition on Nested Tables?

["Tom Magliery" <tom.magliery@justsystems.com>]

I don't imagine that the writer of that comment on the forum was thinking in terms of the specifics of the OASIS CALS Exchange spec, but more likely in terms of whether the DITA OT supports it (it does), or perhaps another authoring tool (XMetaL does).

I can't speak to DITA's original intent, but I know plenty of XMetaL customers do use nested tables by the technique you mentioned (block element wrapper).

mag




-----Original Message-----
From: dita@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:dita@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Eliot Kimber
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2015 10:47 AM
To: dita
Subject: [dita] Explicit Prohibition on Nested Tables?

A comment just came up on the Framemaker 13 prerelease forum to the effect
of "DITA allows nested tables so Framemaker should too".

I don't think that assertion is correct. DITA uses the OASIS CALS Exchange
model, which explicitly disallows the full-CALS <entrytbl> element. That
seems like a pretty clear indication that table nesting is not intended.

However, I couldn't find anything in either the CALS interchange
specification or in the 1.2 spec that 100% says "tables cannot nest".

The problem is that the grammars cannot themselves disallow nested tables
because <entry> allows block elements that then allow tables (e.g., <p>).

I'm wondering if the language reference for <table> or <entry> should have
an explicit "tables may not nest" statement or if the rule should be
something like "DITA does not intend tables to be nested. Processors MAY
support nested tables. Processing interchange is not guaranteed for
documents that include nested tables."?

Cheers,

Eliot

—————
Eliot Kimber, Owner
Contrext, LLC
http://contrext.com




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