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Re: Examples of and justification for id/headers in complex tables

for

From: Laura Carlson
Date: May 24, 2007 7:00AM

> However, please forgive me if I am mistaken, but I think that Laura
> is supporting using headers and id's instead of scope.

No, not instead of scope, just in addition to scope.

Headers"" currently is not in the HTML 5 spec. They are keeping the
scope="" attribute because they consider it adequate to describe all
data tables. The relevant part of the spec at:

<http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/section-tabular.html#header-and-data-cell-semantics>;

(Side note: the HTML 5 spec keeps font, i, and b)

> In the examples given in the above link, it appears that scope may be
> easier to implement and to be used for accessibility.

Because scope is simpler, shorter and less error-prone than id/headers,
it would great if worked for complex tables and had better support. It
would be great also if all complex tables could be transformed into
simple tables. I agree, they are a big pain to mark up.

Laura