Posted by Ben C on 04/27/07 14:30

On 2007-04-27, Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
> Scripsit Ben C:
>
>> For me the essence of a table is that it represents some function of
>> two inputs.
>
> Markup is about relationships, not functions and input.

Functions and input _are_ relationships.

> A table is a data structure, not a function.

I see no distinction at this level of abstraction (c.f. why many
programming languages use parentheses or brackets both for array
indexing and function calls).

> A table is logically a list of lists with the same number of items and
> with some meaningful relationship across the inner lists so that the
> n'th items in inner lists have some connection with each other. For
> example, a simple table of results in a game, with names and points
> scored by each player, is a two-item list where the n'th item of the
> first list and the n'th item in the second list are connected so that
> the former contains the name of a player and the latter the result of
> that player.

> This is a logical (or abstract) structure and need not have any
> visual manifestation

Certainly. Not to be confused with "table" in "display: table" which is
of course a completely different use of the word from "table" in
<table>.

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