On Jan 13, 2005, at 10:01 AM, Andy Budd wrote, in part:
...hairs and getting semantic, isn't all information on a website really just data? So why can't present it all using tables?
Because it is not *tabular* data, unlike the practicular form that this
discussion is all about.
Why? How can you say that a bunch of empty form elements are "tabular data" even if there isn't any data?
When you apply for a bank load do they give you a "table of blank data" to fill in or do they give you a "form" to fill in?
Table: An orderly arrangement of data, especially one in which the data are arranged in columns and rows in an essentially rectangular form
Form: Document with blanks for the insertion of details or information
Null values for named data fields *are* data; empty form fields contain data, and those data are null. They still have meaning, and the meaning is contained within the rows (groups) and the three columns (age range, # of travelers, trip cost per person). A bank form rarely includes tabular data; mostly, it includes a number of questions that relate to you, but not to each other in a columnar way. This author wanted to create a form that applies identically to a number of groups, not just a single group.
Allow me to quote the initial request:
We have a use for a table inside a form. We want to sell a group travel insurance product and many of the questions are simple entries and their may be a large number of people on a trip....
You have three fields to input for each group: age range, # of travelers, trip cost per/person. My first instinct is to put each sub group into a fieldset and repeat the labels and inputs.
To use fieldsets would destroy the semantic declaration of a relationship between groups; even though each fieldset would contain a field that represents the number of travelers, there would be nothing in the markup that declares these data as related in the same way to their respective group. In short, you could not pull from fieldsets the answer to the question "Which group has the most travellers?" That is why marking it up as a table is useful.
--
Ben Curtis
WebSciences International
http://www.websciences.org/
v: (310) 478-6648
f: (310) 235-2067
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