[pmwiki-users] proposed markup for rowspan in simple tables

john.rankin at affinity.co.nz john.rankin at affinity.co.nz
Tue Aug 26 15:03:02 CDT 2008


> Any possibility somebody could throw out an example of how it would
> look spanning a row in an inner column?  Is this how it would look?
>
> ||text ||span rows ///||column 3||
> ||text ||column 3||
> ||text ||column 3||

In my tests, it's this one. Otherwise, in HTML you have to track and remove
the empty cells being spanned. On the other hand, to generate Wikibook
XML, you have to insert empty "placeholder" cells.
>
> Or would you leave a blank column like this?
>
> ||text ||span rows ///||column 3||
> ||text || ||column 3||
> ||text || ||column 3||

Arguably, this is clearer, and pmwiki *should* remove the empty
cells when generating HTML. However, I can't do that so easily as
a local customisation.
>
> It's probably a dumb question if I knew the final resulting HTML
> better, but I'm just trying to visualize it...

I don't think it's a dumb question at all! If the design goal is
editor clarity ("favour writers over readers"), a good case can be
made for the second one. But the first is easier to implement
as a local customisation, the code (for HTML) is simpler, and
it's do-able for generating XML output that uses a different
table model.

JR





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