[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by enuddleyarbl

I guess this will be a learning experience. For the first time, I'm editing a play (just for tweaking to my tastes):

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/os...-ideal-husband

Upon editing it, I found it was formatted as a table. I can see the draw of that, but I'd think that a Description List (<dl>) would be a better solution:

https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_dl.asp

<dl>
  <dt>CharacterA</dt>
  <dd>I think a Description List makes for a better structure for a play.</dd>
  <dt>CharacterB</dt>
  <dd>Dude!  No way.  Tables are where it's at.</dd>
</dl>

Is there any actual consensus about which is a better way to structure a play? Either way, I guess this gives me a chance to work on one of those methods (I hate tables, but have had almost no experience with description lists). Of course, I wonder if it's even possible to convert (easily) from one structure to the other. But, on the off-chance that I can, does anyone have any particularly good css for the formatting of a play's <dl>, <dt> and <dd>?

Well, there are more ways to get that structure, specially under epub3. But if you must work under epub2 and you hate tables, then the easiest is to work with <p> tags just as "normal" epubs. Of course, those <p> tags must have styled with the property "display: inline-block". For example:

A) In the .css stylesheet:

p {
    margin-bottom: 0;
}

.colOne {
    display: inline-block;
    width: 30%; /* here you can play with the value */
    padding-right: 3%;
    text-align: right;

/* Edit: I forgot to add this property */

    vertical-align: top; 
}

.colTwo {
    display: inline-block;
    width: 65%; /* here you can play with the value */
    text-align: left;
    margin-bottom: 0.5em; /* here you can play with the value */
}

B) In the .xhtml file:

<p class="colOne">Mr. Smith:</p>

<p class="colTwo">What do you think about this way of structuring a play?</p>

<p class="colOne">Mr. Brown:</p>

<p class="colTwo">I think I could give it a try.</p>

<p class="colOne">CharacterA:</p>

<p class="colTwo">But I think a Description List makes for a better structure for a play.</p>

<p class="colOne">CharacterB:</p>

<p class="colTwo">Dude!  No way.  Tables are where it's at.</p>

I am writing these lines from my smartphone and I can't check how the styles will work but I think they will work fine.

EDIT: It works fine!