Re: Re: Aligning Columns in HTML Export Tables

[Christian Moe <mail@christianmoe.com>]

On 10/25/10 6:36 AM, Baoqiu Cui wrote:
  I am wondering if there
> is any special reason to use "class" instead of "align".  If not, can we
> change the elisp code to use "align"?

I believe the "align" attribute is slated for obsoletion in HTML5, on 
the grounds that it's better handled by CSS.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html

It's a reason to go with "class" instead. Not a compelling one, perhaps.

My only strong opinion on this is that I absolutely agree with the 
choice not to set the "style" attribute locally on each table cell.

But Sebastian Rose's request that prompted it, /could/ equally well be 
addressed with the "align" attribute:

> How about this (line-wrapped for readability):
>
>
> <tr>
>  <td class="right">1</td>
>  <td class="left">bar</td>
>  <td class="left">text</td>
> <tr>
>
> instead of
>
> <tr>
>  <td style="text-align:right">1</td>
>  <td style="text-align:left">bar</td>
>  <td style="text-align:left">text</td>
> <tr>
>
> ??
>
>
> Combined with the ways to add IDs and classes to tables, we could then style the
> columns better.
>
> I would like to set this for right aligned <td> tags as default:
>
>   td.right { font-family:monospace;text-align:right; }

Using the "align" attribute as follows,

<tr>
  <td align="right">1</td>
  <td align="left">bar</td>
  <td align="left">text</td>
<tr>

Sebastian could achieve the same with CSS like

td[align="right"]  { font-family: monospace;}

In the same way one could even use CSS to override the alignment 
specified by the "align" attribute, if for whatever reason this seemed 
like a good idea...

One slight advantage of the "align" attribute over "class" is that it 
doesn't require the default style to contain the extra verbiage 
Carsten mentioned:

> I have now in the default style:
>
>   td, th { vertical-align: top;  }
>   th.right  { text-align:right;  }
>   th.left   { text-align:left;   }
>   th.center { text-align:center; }
>   td.right  { text-align:right;  }
>   td.left   { text-align:left;   }
>   td.center { text-align:center; }
>
> Is there a way to write this more compactly?

Yours,
Christian