[uf-dev] tables and @headers

[Tantek Ç elik]

In short:

The table headers technique has been developed from real world event
calendar tables that are properly semantically marked up.

We should really avoid any theoretical examples, trying to solve them,
perhaps even bothering with discussing them, because such discussions will
only needlessly corrupt/complexify our markup techniques with no respective
benefit (since the examples are only theoretical).  Let's just say I've had
plenty of personal experience with this in "other" efforts.

A real world example of a table with contact information might be a
directory page for a company.


Specifically:

On 6/20/06 5:12 PM, "Ryan King" <ryan at technorati.com> wrote:

> So, we have a method for including information from the headers of a
> table in the cells of a table ( see [http://microformats.org/wiki/
> hcalendar-brainstorming#Tabular_event_calendars]).
> 
> This method (which needs to be moved to hcard-parsing and later to
> general parsing documentation), was built around the use case of
> having the root class name on a <td> element. For example, something
> like:
> 
> 
> <table>
>  <tr>
>    <th id="foo">...</th>
>  </tr>
> 
>  <tr>
>    <td id="bar" class="vcard" headers="foo">...</td>
>  </tr>
> ...
> 
> 
> So, with the current setup, the element #foo is included as a child
> of #bar. This works find if the root classname is on the <td>.
> However, consider this:
> 
> <table>
>  <tr>
>    <th id="org" ><a class="url org" href="http://
> example.org/">example.org</a></th>
>  </tr>
>  <tr class="vcard">
>    <td class="fn" headers="org">Brian Suda</td>
>  </tr>
> ...
> 
> By the given interpretation, this vcard should have an FN of "Brian
> Suda example.org", because the included header gets counted as a
> child and has a text node that get concatenated with the existing
> text node.
> 
> I'd really like to be able to allow this construct (I actually wrote
> the markup above, not realizing what I was doing),

I'd say the markup is easily fixable by wrapping "Brian Suda" in its own
<span class="fn"> rather than putting the "fn" on the <td>


> There's no way that I can tell to apply headers to a table row, only
> to table cells, which means that with our current setup, I don't see
> how this is useful. I'd like to hear the thoughts of others.

Not "see[ing] how this is useful" is perhaps more a consequence of the
example being theoretical rather than something intrinsic to the headers
construct.

Also, in the example given, there is no reason to use a <table>, as there is
nothing tabular/array-like about the data. It is a degenerate case (only a
single item), and thus there is no need for a table header (cell/row) vs.
table data (cell/row) separation.

> Also, the above is a contrived example, so feel free to respond with
> "not realistic/ doesn't matter".

Yes. ;)

Avoiding theoretical/contrived examples is one thing, avoiding examples
which semantically misuse (excessively use?) markup is another.

Thanks,

Tantek