Let's take your example to the next level, what if the person who decided to remove the "Age" column thinks there is no need for "Position" either, she'd want to keep just the name, would you keep the table?
Then there would only be one coordinate, and I think a 1-dimensional table -is- a list. Not that I just think it should be marked up as one, but I think that's the defining characteristic of a list (in web semantics and elsewhere). As such, it still -could- be marked up as a table, but I think a 1-dimensional table and a list are semantically equivalent. I suppose I look at a table as a series of lists that are related to one another. And once you get two related lists, along comes the need to show how those lists are related, which is what all the descendant elements of tables are designed to do, and which definition lists don't provide.
More seriously, in my opinion yes, it would stop being tabular data because then the top row for the headers becomes useless. Look at it this way: if that (two column) table was linearized, its content would still make sense.
I disagree. What if instead of taking out age, we took out position? Then we'd have: John Smith 20 Jane Doe 23 Is that number their age? Their rank in sales numbers? The number of years they've worked for the company? You'd need to work around what you're missing from tables with something like "In the following list, each name is followed by the age of the person." And if you're going to do that, why not do it for three or four columns as well?
But for me, tabular data is data that *need* x and y reference to make sense.
And 2 column tables do need it to make sense, unless the relation between the two columns is described elsewhere. A table allows you do describe the relationship between the two lists within the data structure. And I think the semantics of an element should be described by that element, not by some random sibling element. ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
