[uf-discuss] Re: hCalendar for events in a table format

[Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis]

Toby A Inkster wrote:

> <table>
>   <thead>
>     <tr>
>       <th id="id_fn" axis="fn">Full name</th>
>       <th id="id_role" axis="role">Role</th>
>       <th id="id_adr"><span class="locality">London</span> Address</th>
>     </tr>
>   </thead>
>   <tbody>
>     <tr class="vcard">
>       <td headers="id_fn">Elizabeth Windsor</td>
>       <td headers="id_role">Queen</td>
>       <td headers="id_adr" class="adr">
>         <span class="street-address">Buckingham Palace</span>
>       </td>
>     </tr>
>     <tr class="vcard">
>       <td headers="id_fn">Gordon Brown</td>
>       <td headers="id_role">Prime Minister</td>
>       <td headers="id_adr" class="adr">
>         <span class="street-address">10 Downing Street</span>
>       </td>
>     </tr>
>   </tbody>
> </table>

AFAICT this is a double misuse of the, admittedly confusingly specified, 
HTML 4.01 AXIS attribute:

1) You're using it for machine-readable identifiers ('fn') as though it 
were CLASS. But it's actually intended for being rendered directly as 
human-readable information:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#multi-dimension

And that's precisely what JAWS does, for instance:

http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/Surfs_Up/Tables.htm

2) The content of AXIS (e.g. a formatted name) is in the cell on which 
it is set and the cell then acts as a header for other cells referencing 
it by ID. The AXIS itself is not inherited by cells to which a TH is a 
header. In one of the examples from the spec:

<TH id="a6" axis="location">San Jose</TH>

San Jose /is/ a location not a label for locations.

--
Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis