simpletable

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Version 1.3 Part 3: All-Inclusive Edition

Document
Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Version 1.3 Part 3: All-Inclusive Edition
Version
1.3
Author
OASIS DITA Technical Committee

The simpletable element is used for tables that are regular in structure and do not need a caption. Choose the simpletable element when you want to show information in regular rows and columns. For example, multi-column tabular data such as phone directory listings or parts lists are good candidates for simpletable. Another good use of simpletable is for information that seems to beg for a three-part definition list; the keycol attribute can be used to indicate which column represents the "key" or term-like column of your structure.

This close match of simpletable to tabular, regular data makes simpletable suitable as the basis for specialized structures such as properties (for programming information) and choice tables (for tasks).

Content models

See appendix for information about this element in OASIS document type shells.

Inheritance

- topic/simpletable

Example

Source:
<simpletable>
 <sthead>
  <stentry>Type style</stentry>
  <stentry>Elements used</stentry>
 </sthead>
 <strow>
  <stentry>Bold</stentry>
  <stentry>b</stentry>
 </strow>
 <strow>
  <stentry>Italic</stentry>
  <stentry>i</stentry>
 </strow>
 <strow>
  <stentry>Underlined</stentry>
  <stentry>u</stentry>
 </strow>
</simpletable>
Formatted output:
Type style Elements used
Bold b
Italic i
Underlined u

Example using keycol

In this sample, the first column is identified as a header column through the use of keycol="1" on the simpletable element. This indicates that items in the first column should be treated as headers for the row that follows. Rendering of the header column is left up to the implementation.

Source:
<simpletable keycol="1">
 <sthead>
  <stentry>Term</stentry>
  <stentry>Categorization</stentry>
  <stentry>Definition</stentry>
 </sthead>
 <strow>
  <stentry>Widget</stentry>
  <stentry>noun</stentry>
  <stentry>Thing that is used for something</stentry>
 </strow>
 <strow>
  <stentry>Frustration</stentry>
  <stentry>noun</stentry>
  <stentry>What you feel when you drop the widget</stentry>
 </strow>
</simpletable>
Formatted output:
Term Categorization Definition
Widget noun Thing that is used for something
Frustration noun What you feel when you drop the widget

Attributes

The following attributes are available on this element: Universal attribute group, Display attribute group, Simpletable attribute group, outputclass, and spectitle.