Re: lynx-dev proposal: rendering tables

[Chuck Martin]

On Mon, Apr 26, 1999 at 11:25:38PM +0500, Vlad Harchev wrote:
> 
>  IMO rendering tables can be greatly imporved with a cheap trick - we can
> render each cell of the table in separate line, but with different identation 
> for each column. Of course, it will take more lines to render the same 
> table, but will be much more readable. 

I just thought of some other potential problems with this approach.
What if the contents of a cell are centered, or worse, right justified.
This would make the indentation difficult to see and interpret.  Maybe
a variation of the numbered list would work.

>  Consider:
>  
> A1-suffix B1 C1
> some-prefix-A2 B2-some-suffix C2
> 
>  vs
>  
> A1 -suffix 
>              B1
>                          C1
> some-prefix-A2
>              B2-some-suffix
>                          C2

I'm not sure what "some-suffix" and "some-prefix" mean, but I'd prefer
less indentation.  How about something like this (the "A1:", etc, and
the "-----..." lines are literal):

-----Start of table-----

A1: Contents if row 1, column A
    Second line of row 1, column A

  B1: Contents of row 1, column B

    C1: Contents of row 1, column C

A2: First cell in second row

  B2: Second cell in second row

    C2: And on and on like this

-----End of table-----

Of course, the style-determined indentations would have to be added to
the table-cell-determined indentations to keep the intended layout of
each cell intact.  Any comments?

Chuck