Re: HTML 3.0 questions/issues

Michael Johnson (michaelj@relay.relay.com)
Mon, 23 Jan 1995 15:59:44 +0100


Bill O'Donnell writes:
>2. Specifying simple relative units allows the user to add columns
> more easily. Suppose you had a 3 column table. The first column
> is perhaps a narrow "subject" list, and the next two columns are
> wider "data" columns. So, you perhaps want the subject column to be
> 1/3 the width of each of the data columns. You then specify the
> subject column to have relative with of 1, and each other column to
> have width 3. Later when you want to add a third data column, all
> you have to do is add another column and give it width 3. If you
> had set up percentages, you would have to recalculate
> and change the widths of all four columns. This becomes painful if
> you have dozens or hundreds of columns.

Quite right. In fact, though I had forgotten it, this is the way that IBM
BookMaster does relative column widths as well. That sounds like the best
solution to me.

Michael Johnson
Relay Technology, Inc.