h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Does not mention that table cells may contain tables, with different border attribute. This seems to work, and allows tables to be placed side by side.

Does not mention , which is useful for the experimentation you MUST do to find out how to make the table you want.

Does not mention any other values for BORDER="?", although link via A264520 to A218882 shows nice single ruled border. (I tried "2" and "-1" to no avail.)

Does not warn that ALIGN="CENTRE" is accepted without complaint but does not align. You need CENTER to centre "centre" as in the example. (If you are previewing GuideML, you see only the result. I spent an hour getting out of this trap.)

Incomplete indeed! On purpose, I believe, because if the entry should mention *everything* there is to say about tables, it would be so long that nobody would like to read it.

The most important thing missing here is mentioning the cellspacing and cellpadding attributes, which makes the table tag look something like this:



Jimster answered your question about the single ruled border in another thread, but to give you a better idea about how it works, I've made some examples at A1300988. (*)

That's only one of the many aspects of tables though. You can find more - but far from all - at A1131418.

As for warning about center/centre... Well, if there should be warnings about everything that can confuse, we would probably need several years to read it.
It *is* confusing, but blame it on the fact that h2g2 is using British English and the HTML language which the table tag is part of is (kind of) American English.


(*) If you check the code I've used to make the page, you can see that I've got all the small tables inside one big table where BORDER="0" (which is the default in GuideML!)

I agree you cannot expand on, and give examples of, everything in this entry. Perhaps there should be links to tutorials, or something like that.

Using the help on offer, I got as far as creating A1299954, with tables within tables, borders on and borders off.

Somewhere in the GuideML help, there must surely be a complete syntactic description for those able to use it, particularly for the parts of GuideML approved for use in edited entries. That entry obviously could not include complete examples, for tables are complex by their nature. Leaving out entire fields of the syntax just cannot be right.

If you trouble to search the guide for "cell", then wade through screens and screens of matches, rejected all unsuitable titles, then wade through A908903, A1039240, A957495 and A892307, you then find A1096968, which (presently unofficially) mentions CELLPADDING and CELLSPACING.

I stand firm: help pages which link to more help pages and then to example which you cannot reproduce with all the information gathered on the way are incomplete somewhere.

OH, I am a pain

It's because we can't explain absolutely everything before Researchers ask that we have the Gurus. And what a fantastic job they do. Especially with table, that I don't understand at all...

This ha been most helpful, and I will add links to A1300988, A1131418 and A1096968 in my editing page (A1299954).

Still, the things about colour changes etc. may not be legal in edited entries, so an official note would be nice.

OH

Hi Old H
I see you've been querying TABLE syntax. Can I add in the problem I seem to have with tables in your and my entries : invisible captions.

Why are they invisible to me, and visible to Old H?

Pimms (where's that cute earring?)

Yes -- "the caption goes here" -- but it doesn't appear in the table, on my Phoenix browser. Is is just a REMark? Or is it visible in other browsers?

Hello Recumbent.

Pimms spotted that this problem occurs in the Brunel skin, but captions are visible in Alabaster or Goo. At least, that is true in Internet Explorer (versions 5 and 6). It may not be a problem with your browser, but with h2g2.

Were the links in A1299954 any help to you?

OH

Thanks OH they were a help but I don't think I'll be using the CELLSPACING or CELLPADDING in A1012230 "Sol-fa (1)" or A1057736 "Sol-fa (2)" because
(a) I'll need to mess around a while to learn how they work and
(b) they appear not to be guaranteed to continue being accepted in edited entries (is this right?)

In the meantime I will leave the formatting I have done with inelegant klutzy  s

Hello Recumbent.

My own guess is that these features will remain forever. The Guide Clinic links to examples which use it, so if this feature is at some future time forbidden in Edited Entries, it will have to be supported for existing entries. Too many entries already use them. They are much more flexible than "nbsp".

But this is only my guess. But Gnomon seems to know what he's talking about, and he recommends not using "nbsp", so I would suggest you consider his advice most carefully.

One final consideration is the various skins in which your entry might be viewed. In GOO there is a marked change of font size for tables, which may make "nbsp" less reliable.

OH

Ah. Then it's back to format-school for a while. Thanks

Done! That wasn't so hard after all. Two curiosities:

CELLSPACING and CELLPADDING can't really be in pixels; I used "4" for padding and it looks reasonable. I tried 40 first and they were way too big, took up several rows.

Does each really need its very own ALIGN="CENTER"? No overall centering?

Hello Recumbent.

Just another guess here, which I thought worked when I used it.

The help stuff says characters are 10x20 pixels. That is probably concealed in the browser somewhere (my screen settings are probably not readable by h2g2). But taking what they call a pixel as 1/10 a character width, and also 1/20 a character height, seems to be about right. I emphasise, this is JUST A GUESS.

Over and out.

OH

A GuideML tag creates in the HTML output. This works fine on most browsers, methinks. But it does look a little odd. (It doesn't look like an empty cell; the border is a bit strange.)

Maybe I should change it to something more universally accepted.

As a by-the-way, why is the output HTML instead of XHTML?

TRiG.

Well if you're asking me, you're asking the wrong person. Old Hairy, I'm afraid, is no longer with us.