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

[john.rankin at affinity.co.nz]

> On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 10:03:58AM +0200, Christian Ridderström wrote:
>>> Maybe it's easier to come up with a rowspan markup for
>>> (:table:)...(:tableend:)? Then your users could use that type of markup
>>> when they must have a rowspan?
>>
>> ...there's already a rowspan markup for advanced tables... it's
>> "rowspan".  :-)
>
> Oops. But I'm glad I now know about it. I assume John already knew about
> this, in which case he probably has a reason for wanting it
> ||...||-tables.

The primary reason is that (as alluded to in earlier messages), the
LaTeX table model makes supporting (:cell rowspan=3:) in
advanced table markup a major headache to do properly,
whereas it's relatively simple to do in simple tables.

The time and skill required are both beyond me. Trust me, it has
been on my to-do list for over a year, and the benefit simply
doesn't match the cost.
>
> John, how often do people need a rowspan in the ||...||-tables?

In general, if simple table markup does the job, I prefer it to advanced
table markup. And if the only job it doesn't do is rowspan, that's a
real nuisance.

> Does the markup have to be really compact?  Could something really
> verbose work? (e.g. like this?)
>
> ||Hello	||(:rowspan=3:)This cell spans three rows	||
> ||Apple	||Should continuing the rowspan here here imply a linebreak?	||
> ||Banana||Or perhaps imply a new paragraph?	||
> ||Cherry||column 2
>

For me, this goes against the spirit of simple table markup and looks
like a misfit. Since all other simple table markup is markup characters,
and in particular we don't use (:colspan=3:), I would prefer a character
markup.

Are there any reasons not to use:

||text||this spans 3 rows+++ ||
||more||
||more||
||text||text||


JR