Re: plan and questions for change in attributes for stricter HTML

[Jacob Bachmeyer]

Gavin Smith wrote:
> [...]
>
> The width specifications seem to be the most appropriate for printed
> output. Often when specifying a @multitable the user wouldn't care
> about the column widths. Maybe the browser can do a good job at the
> layout without them. However, it could matter in some cases. I would
> say there is no rush to replace this. We should check the effects on
> various Texinfo documents before making any change.
>
> If the column width specifications are not optional in the Texinfo
> language (I didn't check, but I suspect they aren't), then making them
> optional would be a first step. Then we could see how often users
> actually wanted to specify the widths.

If I understand correctly, TeX requires table column widths to be 
specified somehow, but HTML does not, so simply ignoring the specified 
widths and letting the HTML renderer handle it may be appropriate here.  
I think we would have to see what effects removing this has on various 
manuals.

Otherwise, the CSS "width" attribute should be sufficient on the first 
row of the table, provided no cells in that row use "colspan" attributes.


-- Jacob