table

The <table> element organizes arbitrarily complex relationships of tabular information. This standard table markup allows column or row spanning and table captions or descriptions. An optional title allowed inside the table element provides a caption to describe the table.

See simpletable for a simplified table model that can be specialized to represent more regular relationships of data.

The DITA table is based on the OASIS Exchange Table Model, augmented with DITA attributes which enable it for specialization, conref, and other DITA processing. In addition, the table includes a desc element, which enables table description that is parallel with figure description.

In DITA tables, in place of the expanse attribute used by other DITA elements, the pgwide attribute is used in order to conform with the OASIS Exchange Table Model. This attribute has a similar semantic (1=page width; 0=resize to galley or column).

Note: The scale attribute represents a stylistic markup property that is maintained for now in tables for legacy purposes. External stylesheets should enable less dependency on this attribute. You should use the scale attribute judiciously in your topics.

Example

Source:

<table>
<tgroup cols="2">
<colspec colname="COLSPEC0" colwidth="121*"/>
<colspec colname="COLSPEC1" colwidth="76*"/>
<thead>
<row>
<entry colname="COLSPEC0" valign="top">Animal</entry>
<entry colname="COLSPEC1" valign="top">Gestation</entry>
</row>
</thead>
<tbody>
<row>
<entry>Elephant (African and Asian)</entry>
<entry>19-22 months</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>Giraffe</entry>
<entry>15 months</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>Rhinoceros</entry>
<entry>14-16 months</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>Hippopotamus</entry>
<entry>7 1/2 months</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>

Formatted output:

Animal	Gestation
Elephant (African and Asian)	19-22 months
Giraffe	15 months
Rhinoceros	14-16 months
Hippopotamus	7 1/2 months

Contains

Doctype	Content model
ditabase, topic, task, reference, concept, glossary, map, bookmap	( ( (title) (optional) then (desc) (optional) ) (optional) then (tgroup) (one or more) )

Contained by

Doctype	Parents
ditabase	p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, draft-comment, abstract, body, section, example, conbody, prereq, context, info, tutorialinfo, stepxmp, choice, stepresult, result, postreq, refbody, refsyn, glossdef, pd
topic	p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, draft-comment, abstract, body, section, example, pd
task	p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, draft-comment, abstract, body, section, example, prereq, context, info, tutorialinfo, stepxmp, choice, stepresult, result, postreq, pd
concept	p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, draft-comment, abstract, body, section, example, conbody, pd
reference	p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, draft-comment, abstract, body, section, example, refbody, refsyn, pd
map, bookmap	p, note, lq, li, itemgroup, dd, draft-comment

Inheritance:

- topic/table

Attributes

Name	Description	Data Type	Default Value	Required?
frame	Specifies which portion of a border should surround the element. Allowable values are: top Draw a line before the element bottom Draw a line after the element topbot Draw a line both before and after the element all Draw a box around the element sides Draw a line at each side of the element none Don't draw any lines around this element -dita-use-conref-target See Using the -dita-use-conref-target value for more information. Some DITA processors or output formats may not be able to support all values.	(top \| bottom \| topbot \| all \| sides \| none \| -dita-use-conref-target)	#IMPLIED	No
colsep	Column separator. A value of 0 indicates no separators; 1 indicates separators.	NMTOKEN	#IMPLIED	No
rowsep	Row separator. A value of 0 indicates no separators; 1 indicates separators.	NMTOKEN	#IMPLIED	No
pgwide	Determines the horizontal placement of the element. Supported values are 1 and 0, although these are not mandated by the DTD. For PDF, the value "1" places the element on the left page margin; "0" aligns the element with the left margin of the current text line and takes indention into account. For XHTML, the table surrounds the table data. Either value sets the table width to 100%.	NMTOKEN	#IMPLIED	No
rowheader	This attribute specifies whether the content of the first column in a table contains row headings. In the same way that a column header introduces a table column, the row header introduces the table row. This attribute makes tables whose first column contains row headings more readable on output. Allowable values are: firstcol The first column contains the row headings. norowheader Indicates that no column contains row headings. This is the processing default. -dita-use-conref-target See Using the -dita-use-conref-target value for more information.	(firstCol \| norowheader\| -dita-use-conref-target)	#IMPLIED	No
scale	Specifies a percentage, selected from an enumerated list, that is used to resize fonts in relation to the normal text size. This attribute is primarily useful for print-oriented display. The scale attribute provides an acknowledged style-based property directly on DITA elements. For the table and fig elements, the intent of the property is to allow authors to adjust font sizes on the content of the containing element, primarily for print accomodation. An image in these contexts is to be scaled only by its own direct scale property. If not specifically scaled, such an image is unchanged by the scale property of its parent table or fig.	(50 \| 60 \| 70 \| 80 \| 90 \| 100 \| 110 \| 120 \| 140 \| 160 \| 180 \| 200 \| -dita-use-conref-target)	#IMPLIED	No
%univ-atts; (%select-atts;, %id-atts;, %localization-atts;)	A set of related attributes, described at %univ-atts;	parameter entity	PE not applicable	Not applicable
%global-atts; (xtrf, xtrc)	A set of related attributes, described at %global-atts;	parameter entity	PE not applicable	Not applicable
class, outputclass	Common attributes described in Other common DITA attributes