Proper tables

[galax]

Greetings,

From several posts I get the impression that td/tr is mostly obsolete in epub format. The main reason is its lack of proper formatting with overall design.

The alternatives that I've see is to use grid or flex.

But here comes my question does koreader have 100% flex and grid css support? In the past I had so much troubles with lo/li and dt/dd with horrible render results.

If anybody can give me some hints on how to create responsive tables in koreader it'd be great.

The last question is whether flex or grid will resize in vertical and horizontal mode.

Thanks in advance.

[Frenzie]

But here comes my question does koreader have 100% flex and grid css support? In the past I had so much troubles with lo/li and dt/dd with horrible render results.

It doesn't.

If anybody can give me some hints on how to create responsive tables in koreader it'd be great.

It's hard to tell what you're trying to achieve. If you want tables just use tables.

[galax]

I was gonna answer myself.

Indeed, after some trials koreader doesn't support at all.

Grid offers interesting ways of organizing data in a sematic data. But given the purpose I think it's overdoing things. Traditional tables is good enough for now.

I was a bit annoyed about td/tr not separating the header from syntax row. Or the td/tr not able to create columnated data.

That is one block of td/tr can't be displayed as column.

Also many blogs online css tables are superior because of this or that reason.

Anyways, traditional tables are fine after all.

Thanks for replying.

[galax]

It gets a bit more complicated.

Koreader actually is able to render rotated rows as columns with some changed in the settings.

The following render choices are available:

Legacy
Flat
Book
Web

And this is the description in the handbook:

RENDER MODE: This option determines how your document is rendered by KOReader. Default is WEB and generally you don’t need to change this setting. When a book (or saved web page) is very complicated (specified widths or margins, negative margins, floats etc.) and layout looks bad or overflow the screen, you can try other rendering modes.

So the 'column' css syntax instead of rows:

tr { display: block; float: left; }
th, td { display: block; }

in Koreader does render properly in "LEGACY" mode but not in "WEB" mode which is the one the handbook recommends using.

It's interesting to note that Kobo does render the above css snippet correctly.

A search online about epub and tables there's some official specs about the matter:

https://epubknowledge.com/docs/tables

All tables should have the epub:type="table" applied to the table tag, example:

Not much more, it only gives examples of data in rows.

Now comes the difficult part on deciding WHAT TO DO for writing the ebook! It takes some time and effort to create content and with so many choices I'd rather avoid using the wrong format for the epub.

a - Use 'css' column rows AND use koreader in "LEGACY" mode.
b - Or use official epub table specs and force column data into unnatural row html syntax.

I need help. What's the general consensus on the issue???

Thanks in advance.

[Frenzie]

The general consensus is that you want to add a minimal testcase, and probably also a screenshot or two.

But ignoring that for a second, if you don't want tables why are you using tables?