ICADD asks for optional COLSTART and ROWSTART attribute
values and does not expect empty cells where spans might
overlap -- to a great extent because it believes that tables
might be pivotted or otherwise reconfigured at any time.
> I ask because if the DSSSL table model ends up in
> DSSSL-Lite, the burden of computing spanning rows
> will be on *stylesheet authors*. I'm sure it's possible
> to write Scheme code to do this for the current
> semantics, but I'm also sure it's not easy...
> COLSTART attributes and/or empty cells make
> the problem much more tractable.
>
A problem with the empty cells model is that they imply
that the table really is intended to be used *only* in
this way...that is, that the data is not expected to
be reconfigured into other presentation forms.
> It may also make converting other table formats into
> HTML easier, since the conversion software won't
> need to figure out when cells must be omitted.
> It may also make it easier for other browsers to
> implement tables.
Perhaps this is a six of one/half doz of other situation.
However, it still seems to me that the current model is
cleaner, and, if needed, a filter can generate the empty
cells -- temporarily, for whatever processing is needed --
more easily than a processor can decide that an empty
cell with some kind of attributes can be ignored.
Yuri Rubinsky