Re: [docbook] strict versus transitional XHTML tables [was: DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 18 Mar 2003]

[Tobias Reif <tobiasreif at pinkjuice dot com>]

Paul Grosso wrote:


> I'm generally a fan of separating format from content too.


It's the best strategy in most scenarios, yes. Mixing them without a 
real reason is almost never a good idea.


> But tables are by definition presentational.


I disagree. Tabular data marked up as table with purely structural and 
semantic markup makes a lot of sense, and is usable, and can be accessible.

> I mean, if
> you're going to be black and white, you should argue against
> table markup of any kind.


I can't follow your logic here, at all.


> As it stands, the XHTML strict table model includes attributes
> for both vertical and horizontal cell alignment (as just one
> example), so it's hard to be black and white here.  Given how
> much presentation XHTML strict already includes, I'm arguing 
> that making users use role="glump" instead of bgcolor="green" 
> does more harm than good.

What harm does it do?


  td.glump {background-color: green}

seems very fine to me. What's the requirement for <td bgcolor="green"/> 
in either DocBook or XHTML?


Tobi

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