On 21 Oct 2016, at 9:29, Hussein Shafie wrote:
On 10/20/2016 07:58 PM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
Sorry, I was very busy. Tomorrow or so, I will send you a copyrighted
file, off list, for you to look at. I was, in fact, able to edit that
table in XML Mind. However, I did have to use the Command-L command
to
re-render the page as the changes I made to the file was not
automatically re-rendered by XML Mind. My only theory right now is
that
it had something to do with the (complex - or not) stylesheet I used.
Thank you very much. Please do not hesitate to also send us your
custom CSS stylesheet too, in case you selected the "Emulate Web
Browser" view
(http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/xhtml/view.html).
I just sent a long message to you off-list, including attachments. The
issues are (mainly) related the procedures that XMLmind follows in order
to keep the conformance requirements for tables (where the problem is
that empty <tr> elements per the HTML specification are non-conforming):
* Often (but not always, as I documented in that message) XMLmind
refuses to make <tr> elements empty. However, even if, per the HTML
validator, it is a bug to have empty <tr> elements, Web browsers support
this without any problem whatsoever. And I am convinced (at least I was,
before I started to write this message) that authoring tools, such as
XMLmind, do need support this in some way or another. Because, as an
intermediate step, it is sometimes necessary to create empty <tr>
elements. (However, I now tend to think that those intermediate steps
could be handled by XMLmind itself.)
* Thus, it might be that the current refusal to create empty <tr>
elements actually in principle is the correct solution but that you need
to rework the way it works.
1. For instance: Imagine that we have a 3 column row which contains 2
cells with rowspan="2" and one cell with rowspan="1". In such a case,
the <tr> on the next line woujld only contain a single cell element:
<tr><td rowspan="2">A</td><td rowspan="2">B</td><td>C</td></tr>
<tr><td>X</td></tr>
2. Now, what if you want to collapse that last, "splitted" cell (the C
and the X) in the third column into a single cell? You will the probably
select the upper cell and span it to the lower cell, creating a CX cell.
The question is: What should then happen? (The first thing to say is
that XMLmind currently refuses to span that cell - warning me that doing
so would creeate an empty <tr> element. But ignoring that problem for
now, let us image that XMLmind did allow us to span that cell, what
result should we get after the spanning?)
* Alternative A) (second row becomes empty):
<tr><td rowspan="2">A</td><td rowspan="2">B</td><td
rowspan="2">CX</td></tr>
<tr></tr>
* Alternative B) (second row plus @rowspan automatically get deleted):
<tr><td>A</td><td>B</td><td>CX</td></tr>
* Alternative C) (the bottom td is not deleted - it is simply made
hidden):
<tr><td rowspan="2">A</td><td rowspan="2">B</td><td
rowspan="2">CX</td></tr>
<tr><td hidden="hidden"/></tr>
* Thinking about it now, I think that alternative B) is the only real
option since both alternative A) and C) will leave a <tr> which become
essentially invisible, to the author. Which is highly problematic.
Today, I would have to first copy the content of the X cell and paste it
into the C cell. Then I would have delete the bottom <tr>. Plus that I
would have to remove the rowspan attribute. For me, as author, this
means that there really is no way - that I can see - to do this that
avoids that the table, in some step in the process, becomes invalid.
And this, in turn, means that either XMLmind must allow me to, as an
intermediate step, create invalid tables. Or, failing that, that XMLmind
must take care of the intermediate steps for me.
Because, like I said: Currently, in XMLmind, there is no effective way
to reach from step 1) to step 2 B). Currently, XMLmind will as I told,
in some situations (but not the above situation), create empty <tr>
elements (I described at leaste one example in the offlist message I
sent).
Here is the effective way that XMLmind should implement:
* Once one tries to make the C cell span to the next line,
* then XMLmind should, in one go
1. automatically delete the second <tr> and
2. automatically delete the rowspan="2" attributes of the first row as
well (as they are no longer needed and as they would also make the table
non-conforming).
There is probably more I could and should say ... but I hope at least
that this was useful.
--
Leif Halvard Silli
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