Re: [xml-dev] HTML Table Validator ?

[Michael Smith <smith@xml-doc.org>]

Stettner Michael <Michael.Stettner@siemens.com> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> in our xml documents we use tables according to the HTML table model. (like
> in the sample below)
> 
> Here we have problems with "logical incorrect tables"
> This means these documents are XML correct (they parse succesfully) but they
> are not displayable - or look strange
> because e.g. rowspan or colspan attributes are set incorrect.
> In our case this leads to problems if we try to generate MIF files from
> these documents.
> 
> What we are looking for is a utility or library/source code which is able to
> check these tables to be logical correct.
> 
> As this should be a common problem i am hoping that solutions already exist.
> 
> Happy about any hint

It seems like the only way your document authors could be introducing
rowspan and colspan errors is if they're marking up the tables by hand
instead of using a graphical table editor. If that's the case, instead
of doing a post-authoring check for logical correctness, you might
consider authoring the tables using a WYSIWYG/graphical table editor.

There are many HTML authoring applications (and some XML authoring
applications) that will let you create and edit HTML tables
graphically instead of marking them up by hand. It might be a little
extra work to integrate other editing tools into your workflow, but
doing it that way, you should never be able to produce logically
incorrect table markup, so you won't need to do any post-authoring
check of your tables.