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

[Christian Ridderström]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Mike Bishop wrote:

>>>> 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.

I think the above is better.

>> One could potentially come up with a markup that means "skip this cell 
>> in output", as in:
>>
>>   ||text ||span rows +++||column 3||
>>   ||text ||+++++++++++++||column 3||
>>   ||text ||+++++++++++++||column 3||

I like this idea. I don't suppose it'd generalize to spanning both 
horizontally and vertically?

Vertically span of cells B1+B2 and cells B3+B4)
 	||A1	||B1,B2 +++|| C1 ||
 	||A2	||      +++|| C2 ||
 	||A3	||B3,B4	+++|| C3 ||
 	||A4	||	+++|| C4 ||

Horizontal span of cells B1+C1 and cells D1+E1:
 	||A1	||B1,C1 +++||+++ ||D1,E1  +++||+++  ||
 	||A2	||B2       || C2 ||D2        ||E2  ||
 	||A3	||B3,B4	   || C3 ||D3	     ||E3  ||
 	||A4	||	   || C4 ||D4	     ||E4  ||

Combined span of cells B1+B1+C1+C2:
 	||A1	||B1,C1,B2,C2 +++||+++ ||D1,E1     ||+++  ||
 	||A2	||	      +++||+++ ||D2        ||E2  ||
 	||A3	||B3,B4	         || C3 ||D3	     ||E3  ||
 	||A4	||	         || C4 ||D4	     ||E4  ||

I'm definitely not sure about this, but I thought I'd throw out the idea.
The motivation is that maybe it's easier to explain spanning by saying 
that the cells with '+++' are spanned together, regardless if it's 
horizontally or vertically.

/Christian

PS. I don't know if HTML support the last type of spanning (B1+B2+C1+C2).

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44            http://www.md.kth.se/~chr