["Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@allette.com.au>] CALS versus HTML tables:nice, but what about other tabular structures?

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

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• From: "Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@allette.com.au>
• To: "Norman Walsh" <ndw@nwalsh.com>
• Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 23:11:34 +1100

Hi Norm, I wonder if you could post this to the DOCBOOK maillist,
because I would prefer not to subscribe.

While it is interesting to contrast CALS and HTML tables, there are a lot
of table structures that cannot be represented conveniently using them.
Perhaps the periodic table or railway timetables are examples.

People who need these kinds of tables have to do then using graphics or
hand placed lines, pretty much. 

The problem for DOCBOOK is that no automated publishing systems
support them: even XST-FO and DSSSL do not.  These tables are noticeably
idiomatic for CJK (Chinese/Korean/Japanese countries, for good graphical
reason that they have short words).  

I have made some webpages showing examples of these kind of tables,
at 
    http://www.ascc.net/~ricko/table/

And I have a suggestion for a DTD structure that can model the data.
(I imagine it would have to go hand in hand with some layout manager,
such as the ones Java provides, and lots of styling hints/instructions.)
This is the "community of cells" at
    http://www.ascc.net/xml/en/utf-8/chinatabpaper.html


Cheers
Rick Jelliffe
  





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