[Pmwiki-users] Page revisions tables

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Thu Sep 11 00:26:06 CDT 2003


On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 03:54:41PM +1000, Nathan Jones wrote:
> 
> Looking at the HTML spec, there's nothing to suggest that a browser
> ignore a specified width, but it does say that an author should not rely
> on tables for layout. For more info, see Dynamic reformatting at:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/appendix/notes.html#notes-tables

On the other hand, the HTML specification has been saying that an author 
should not rely on tables for layout since tables were first introduced into
the specification.  It's a largely philosophical position deriving from the 
fact that HTML is designed to markup content, not layout.  

Until very recently there were really no reliable alternatives to using 
tables for layout control--CSS and XHTML layout support in browsers is just 
now beginning to be implemented (and standardized) to a sufficient degree 
to be a possible alternative.  However, all of the major commercial sites 
I typically use-- Google, Amazon, CNN, Netscape, Yahoo, etc. -- still 
exclusively use tables for layout, and I tend to follow their lead.

Also, I'm planning to rewrite the HandleDiff (?action=diff) function to be 
able to support author tracking, and as part of the rewrite it will likely 
provide much more opportunity for local customization than presently
exists (including internationalization), so that someone may be able to
fix the display a bit more to their liking.  Of course, it's a relatively
easy matter for someone to create their own drop-in replacement to HandleDiff.

Pm



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