DITA 2.0 proposal - simpletable alignment with HTML table

["Michael Priestley" <mpriestl@ca.ibm.com>]

We've had two table
models in DITA for a long time - CALS and simpletable. Neither of them
is easily mappable or roundtrippable with tables in HTML, which poses a
problem for tool compatibility, especially for LWDITA where HTML is the
common table model in both HDITA and MDITA.

Rather than add
a third table model to support HTML table markup, we propose extending
the markup for simpletable to allow it to support common HTML table elements
and attributes. This could be done in a backwards-compatible fashion -
existing simpletable markup would remain valid, we would only be adding
options to support more HTML markup. We would still have a complex (CALS)
model and simple model, this just means that our simple table would map
more easily to the widely supported HTML5 table.

The value of simpletable
for specialization purposes would be preserved, and we would gain greater
compatibility with the dominant table markup standard in today's web and
CMS tooling.

Michael Priestley, Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
Taxonomy Specialist, Marketing Analytics
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com