Table Conversions: Ive often heard people talk about the difficulty of converting tabular material to an XML/SGML format. Why is this such a big deal?
Well, to begin with, tables tend to be complicated. A proper representation of a table needs to contain the correct contents of each row and cell, vertical and horizontal spanning and alignment, vertical and horizontal separators, as well as distinctions between header rows and body rows. Potentially, there is a lot that can go wrong. And if you do get any table elements wrong in the conversion process, the amount of effort to clean up an incorrect table can be substantial. If the tables were originally composed using a word processor/desktop publishing system with support for table editing, and the table tool was used properly, then the conversion can be fairly straightforward. But in many cases, either a tool didn’t exist, authors didn’t know how to use it, or they didn’t use it properly. The result will be something that looks like a table in print, but will involve a good deal of guessing when it comes to conversion.
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