I'm back - with a question about simple tables

[Robert Anderson <robert.dan.anderson@oracle.com>]

Greetings from my new OASIS accountâ starting off with a follow-up question about Carlosâs proposal to slightly expand simpletables:

https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/dita/202003/msg00048.html

 

The proposal adds titles, row/column spanning, and a couple of accessibility issues to simpletables, and says the same should be done for existing specializations. Iâm one of those that pushed all of these to carry through to specializations, because Iâve seen a need for spanning in <properties>, and this takes care of it nicely.

 

But when I went in to make the changes, I realized applying this everywhere is silly. Iâm starting with the following changes in <choicetable> and <properties> â please let me know if any of these seem wrong.

• Both should get the optional title, because it might be useful.
• All of the entries/headers should get the accessibility attributes.
• Within property tables, give entries (but not headers) the ability to span rows. Iâve seen a need for this specific feature, for example so one <proptype> can cover 2 rows and thus 2 values. (Headers here only have one row so they canât span.)
• Do not add Âcolumn spanning for these. My reasoning: each column has purpose (type / value / description), it doesnât make sense for a single entry to be both the type and the value, or both the value and the description? Seems column spanning here would just add confusion.
• Within choice tables, each row today must have one option and one description. I havenât seen a suggestion to change that, and unless that changes, spanning cannot be valid.

 

Thanks,

Robert D. Anderson