My two cents: I agree with Jim regarding the CSS border-collapse property.
Option #2 (supporting both border-spacing and border-collapse) should be
reasonable for a low-cost printer to implement and this would also eliminate
any confusion with requiring the border-spacing property.
Option #1 is also a perfectly valid option but I believe it should read:
only implement the _separated_ border model and not collapsed. The CSS2
errata changed the default value for border-collapse to "separate" since
this is the default value in IE, Opera, Mozilla, etc...
Scott Silbernagel
Hewlett-Packard
> -----Original Message-----
> From: BIGELOW,JIM (HP-Boise,ex1) [mailto:jim.bigelow at hp.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 9:46 AM
> To: xp at pwg.org> Subject: XP> Border-spacing property of enhanced layout not effective
>>> Hello,
>> The CSS Print Profile
> (http://www.pwg.org/xhtml-print/HTML-Version/CSS-Print.html)
> for XHTML-Print
> states that the border-spacing property but not the
> border-collapse property
> must be supported by a printer conforming to the Enhance
> Layout extensions.
>> The border-collapse property allows the document author to
> control whether a
> single line (border-collapse: collapse) separates table cells
> or whether
> each table cell has its own border (border-collapse:
> separate) so that there
> are two lines separating each table cell. When
> border-collapse has the value
> separate, the border-spacing property controls the distance
> between the cell
> borders, otherwise the value is irrelevant.
>> The xhtml file at the end of this message illustrates how
> border-spacing
> separates borders when each cell has its own border, but not
> when a single
> border separates cells. The resulting page rendered with Netscape is
> attached as a pdf.
>> What to do?
> -----------
> Requiring that an enhanced layout printer implement
> border-spacing without
> border-collapse seems to be specifying only half a solution.
> To remedy the
> situation the specification could do one of the following:
>> 1. Drop the requirement for supporting the border-spacing
> property and say
> that printers must only implement the collapsed border model.
> Documents
> could use the padding property to separate table cells, ex.
> td {padding :
> 4mm}
>> 2. Require support for border-collapse and that printers
> support both the
> collapsed and separated border models. For consistency across
> all printers,
> a recommendation of how to render empty cells should be
> included in place of
> support for the empty-cells property.
>> Weighting the tradeoffs
> -----------------------
> Option 0 (do nothing) could lead to inconsistencies between
> printers since
> there's no direction on what to do with the border-spacing
> information and
> lack of support for border-collapse doesn't allow the
> implementer to use the
> CSS2 spec.
>> Option 1. (only implement the collapsed border model) This
> seems sufficient
> for simple tables of picture thumbnails from digital cameras.
> This seems to
> be what Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 have done.
>> Option 2. (implement both collapsed and separate border
> models) This is the
> full CSS2 solution. Document writers have available the full
> range of CSS2
> functionality. Documents viewed in opera and Netscape
> navigator would be
> printed as seen in the browser. However, this will require
> more processing
> to compute the table's width, but doesn't violate the
> one-pass table layout
> if the fixed table layout algorithm is used.
>>> Recommendation
> --------------
> I recommend option 2 -- supporting both border models, collapsed and
> separate, and the border-collapse and border-spacing
> properties. What do
> the champions of low-cost printers say?
>>> Jim Bigelow
> Hewlett-Packard
> 208-396-2068
>jim.bigelow at hp.com>>> XHTML-Print file
> =====================
>> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
> "http://ww.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
> <head>
> <title>table border spacing</title>
> <style type="text/css">
>> table { border-spacing:4mm; }
> table.col {
> border-collapse:collapse;
> border: 2mm outset;
>> }
> table.sep {
> border-collapse:separate;
> border: 2mm outset;
> }
> table.sep td {border: inset 1mm;}
>> </style>
> </head>
> <body>
> <p>
> <table class="col">
> <tr>
> <td>0123456789</td>
> <td>0123456789</td>
> <td>0123456789</td>
> <td>0123456789</td>
> </tr>
> <tr>
> <td>01234567890123456789</td>
> <td>01234567890123456789</td>
> <td>01234567890123456789</td>
> <td>01234567890123456789</td>
> </tr>
> </table>
> </p>
>> <p>
> <table class="sep">
> <tr>
> <td>0123456789</td>
> <td>0123456789</td>
> <td>0123456789</td>
> <td>0123456789</td>
> </tr>
> <tr>
> <td>01234567890123456789</td>
> <td>01234567890123456789</td>
> <td>01234567890123456789</td>
> <td>01234567890123456789</td>
> </tr>
> </table>
> </p>
>>> </body>
> </html>
>>