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RFC is not a standard

RFC is not a standard. It can be decronymed as Request For Comments or Response From Cucumber or Reasonable Fertilized Conundrum.

Some people (few) supposedly use it as a refernce point. Some people (lots) don't know what RFC means.

We decided to use RFC for what it supposed to and make some comments on one of the Request For Comments.

The Dig

Lately we digged up RFC for tables. This RFC, for no apparent reason, described HTML tables. We read it with great appreciation, and immediately applied our powerful analog-debilitative filtering system against it. This filtering system reduced IQ attenuation of the text while leaving most of the sense intact, this stipulating nonsensical exeskeleton which we tried to represent -- again -- in tabular form.

The RFC Table

We have created the table which uses all elements from the table RFC. Whether this tablewill be visible in some particular browser is unknown, and theoretically unimportant. 



<TABLE border=10 width="60%" align=center cols=2 
                frame=hsides rules=cols cellspacing = 10 cellpadding=10>
   <CAPTION align>
        Some caption
   </CAPTION>
   <COLGROUP span=2 width="30%" align=center valign=top>
      <COL span=1 width=0.7* align=right valign=middle>
   <THEAD align=center valign=top>
      <TR align=left valign=middle>
         <TH align=center valign=middle> Head cell 1
         <TH align=center valign=middle> Head cell 2
   <TBODY align=center valign=top>
      <TR align=left valign=middle>
         <TH align=center valign=middle> Body cell 1
         <TD align=center valign=middle> Body cell 2
      <TR align=left valign=middle>
         <TD align=center valign=middle nowrap colspan=2 rowspan=1> Body cell 3
   <TFOOT align=center valign=top>
      <TR align=left valign=middle>
         <TH align=center valign=middle nowrap colspan=2 rowspan=1> Footer cell 1
</TABLE>

. . . . . Rendering of the table above . . . . .

Some caption
Head cell 1 Head cell 2
Body cell 1 Body cell 2
Body cell 3
Footer cell 1

RFC table tags

We listed all the table tags as specified by RFC. As an added bonus, we throwed in some arguably useful tag parameters supported by the two marked leading browsers.

How these tags are handled by the browsers is described in the Maximum RFC section.

(N) means that we think the feature is not supported by the Netscape Navigator. "We think" means this feature maybe supported, but we were unable to trace any sign of such support.
(IE) means the feature is specific to Microsoft Internet Explorer, (IE + N3) Internet Explorer and Navigator version 3 and greater, etc.

Also, we thought the tags are pretty obvious. If we mistaken and they did not, table RFC provides a fine reference point, much finer that we would ever be able to provide.

There are some notes at the end.

<TABLE>

Table itself.

BORDERunits (value is optional: <table border> is a valid construct)
ALIGN (N)(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) alignment -- relative to window
WIDTHpercent or pixels
COLS number of columns
FRAME (N)(VOID|ABOVE|BELOW|HSIDES|LHS|RHS|VSIDES|BOX|BORDER) which sides of table frame to display
RULES (N)(NONE|GROUPS|ROWS|COLS|ALL) how to draw rules between cells
CELLSPACINGunits
CELLPADDINGunits
BGCOLOR (IE+N3)a color (also TR and TD)
BORDERCOLOR (IE)a color

<CAPTION>

Contains caption text.

ALIGN (N)(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) caption text alignment.

<COLGROUP>

Column group. Closing tag is optional.

SPANunits
WIDTHpercent or pixels
ALIGN(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) horizontal alignment in cells
VALIGN(TOP|MIDDLE|BOTTOM|BASELINE) vertical alignment in cells

<COL>

Column. Closing tag is optional.

SPANunits
WIDTHpercent or pixels
ALIGN(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) horizontal alignment in cells
VALIGN(TOP|MIDDLE|BOTTOM|BASELINE) vertical alignment in cells

<THEAD>

Table header. Closing tag is optional.

ALIGN(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) horizontal alignment in cells
VALIGN(TOP|MIDDLE|BOTTOM|BASELINE) vertical alignment in cells

<TFOOT>

Table footer. Closing tag is optional.

ALIGN(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) horizontal alignment in cells
VALIGN(TOP|MIDDLE|BOTTOM|BASELINE) vertical alignment in cells

<TBODY>

Table body.Opening and closing tags are optional.

ALIGN(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) horizontal alignment in cells
VALIGN(TOP|MIDDLE|BOTTOM|BASELINE) vertical alignment in cells

<TR>

Table row. Closing tag is optional.

ALIGN(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) horizontal alignment in cells
VALIGN(TOP|MIDDLE|BOTTOM|BASELINE) vertical alignment in cells

<TH>

Table header cell. Closing tag is optional.

NOTE: despite RFC does not define WIDTH as attribute for TH and TD, Netscape seems to accept width specification for this elements.

NOWRAPeither NOWRAP or nothing (i.e. wrap)
ROWSPANunits (default=1)
COLSPANunits (default=1)
ALIGN(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) horizontal alignment of the contents
VALIGN(TOP|MIDDLE|BOTTOM|BASELINE) vertical alignment of the contents

<TD>

Table cell. Closing tag is optional.

NOWRAPeither NOWRAP or nothing (i.e. wrap)
ROWSPANunits (default=1)
COLSPANunits (default=1)
ALIGN(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR) horizontal alignment of the contents
VALIGN(TOP|MIDDLE|BOTTOM|BASELINE) vertical alignment of the contents

ALIGN

(LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT|JUSTIFY|CHAR)As implies.
CHARAlignment character (CHAR=":") default is decimal point.
CHAROFFOffset of the alignment character.

Generic attributes

IDdocument-wide identifier
CLASSclass - for style sheets
LANGsome language
DIR(LTR|RTL) text direction : left to right, right to left.

Notes

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