Posted by Ben C on 04/26/07 17:21

On 2007-04-26, Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
> Scripsit dorayme:
[...]
>> When
>> one finds it convenient to use a table, it is not too hard to
>> find arguments. I thought yours not too bad. I still think mine
>> was good.
>
> I think yours is much worse. There is no correspondence between the
> navigation "column" and the content "column". The navigation column could be
> described as one by N matrix, but it would be rather illogical to consider
> the content as another "column", except purely for layout.
>
> My table, on the other hand, exhibits genuine tabular relationships: the
> text and the notes run in parallel. Each note relates to piece particular
> text (in a cell). What could be _more_ tabular (assuming you haven't got the
> odd idea that only numbers can be tabulated)?

For me the essence of a table is that it represents some function of two
inputs. So, for example, if I have "foods" in the rows, and "vitamins"
in the columns, I can lookup how much vitamin A in a carrot, or C in an
apple by reading the values of the function from the table.

Annotating text with notes doesn't really have this characteristic,
although you could probably stretch the idea.

But, to answer your question, the table of vitamins and foods is
something that is more tabular.

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