Matthew Orgass <darkstar@pgh.net> writes:

>   True.  A browser that does not implement tables at all would completely
> ignore table tags, creating messy output in my table example (but still
> useable).  Not that the main NetBSD page uses tables and would be
> similarly displayed.

Lynx "support" for tables simply lays all cells out *vertically*,
regardless of how wide the table is. The reason this works for the
main NetBSD page is because the cell elements there are not structured --
the table is simply used to gain some layout width.

> > Whether <PRE> etc renders into something decent is really a shot in the
> > dark.
> 
>   Not true.  <PRE> is defined as "preformatted text".  While a cell phone
> might strip out the extra spaces, any text or graphical browers that does

You're wrong. The problem here is that lynx *does* understand tables,
just in an incredibly unuseful way for the presentation of structured
data. lynx's bogus table layout will interfere with the <pre> hack. Even if
you could adapt the <pre> hack to lynx, you would then find yourself in
a situation where you face incompatabilities with browsers that are not
lynx.

<dl> and <ul> combined solve all these problems, and they are
extremely old and well rendered tags and well suited to the
hierarchical nature of the data. No egregious hacks needed.

> know of any browsers that do not render <PRE> correctly (lynx could deal
> with it from at least version 2.1 almost six years ago).

See above.