I noticed that tables created with header cells, i.e., using '!' notation,
use th elements for header cells. For example,
|!Fruit|!Colour|
|Apple|Green|
|Mandarin|Orange|
results in:
<table>
<tbody>
<tr class="evenRow">
*<th>*Fruit*</th><th>*Colour*</th>*
</tr>
<tr class="oddRow">
<td>Apple</td><td>Green</td>
</tr>
<tr class="evenRow">
<td>Mandarin</td><td>Orange</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Tables created with header rows, i.e., using "||h" notation, use thead > td
elements for header cells. For example,
|Fruit|Colour|h
|Apple|Green|
|Mandarin|Orange|
results in:
<table>
*<thead>*
<tr class="evenRow">
*<td>*Fruit*</td><td>*Colour*</td>*
</tr>
*</thead>*
<tbody>
<tr class="oddRow">
<td>Apple</td><td>Green</td>
</tr>
<tr class="evenRow">
<td>Mandarin</td><td>Orange</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
I'd like to make a case for changing the generated html to use th for
header cells in header rows. As far as I can determine from the html5
specification, both td and th elements can legally occur as part of tr
elements -- see here
<https://www.w3.org/TR/html/tabular-data.html#the-tr-element>. It is
certainly the case that current table output of both types validates as
correct using the w3c html validator <https://validator.w3.org/>. The table
model, however, states:
Cells can either be data cells or header cells. Data cells correspond to td
> elements, and header cells correspond to th elements.
This seems fairly definitive, though the specification then goes on to
state:
Cells of both types can have zero or more associated header cells.
which, frankly, I don't quite follow.
I checked the first few html table guides found by google and they all
teach the use of th for header cells. Using th for header cells in header
rows would also make the output of both table type more consistent.
In practice, using td elements in table header won't blow up any browsers.
It is only relevant for those creating css styles for tables. I suspect a
lot of folks naively creating css expect header cells to be th cells rather
than td cells. There is the reverse problem where stylesheets written
specifically for TW-created tables will not work with tables using th
elements for header cells. (This is where I ran up against this issue: I
wrote a macro that generates tables with th elements and found the Shiraz
table stylesheets did not style the headers properly.)
That shows one problem that would be involved in changing the table html:
existing css that handles only thead > td would "break". Still, I'd argue
it is better to go through that experience once to have more intuitively
correct html output.
Incidentally, although the output from using header cells validates as
correct html, it looks odd to me since there is a single tbody element
which includes th cells along with td cells. If the tbody element is
removed the table output still validates as correct html.
Cheers,
David.
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