DOCBOOK: newbie table colspec colwidth question

[Douglas du Boulay <ddb@R3401.rlem.titech.ac.jp>]

I have a docbook sgml document containing many informaltables.
I am using the linux documentation project ldp.dsl customization
of the modular docbook.dsl dsssl stylsheets for rendering to HTML.

Using all default sgml attributes, all the resultant HTML tables have 
explicitly equal width columns. In an earlier version of my document
using sgmltools and the linuxdoc.dtd the column widths were unspecified 
but the default behaviour of most browsers was to adjust the columnwidths to 
fit the contents. While the latter is clearly primitive and 
implementation specific, it was certainly a damn sight cleaner and 
easier to read than the equi-width columns I am now obtaining. 

Probably it is most desirable to specify the colwith explicitly with
the <colspec> tag but I wonder what is the recomended way to set those
widths for both html and print output. Also, since I have very many of these
tables, is there a simple dsssl customization switch to disable the 
current equiwidth settings in the meantime?

Thanks in advance
Doug