ikiwiki/doc/todo/support_multi-row_table_headers.mdwn

[[!template id=gitbranch branch=jon/table_headerblock author="[[Jon]]"]]
It would be great if it were possible to support multi-row table headers in the [[plugins/table]] plugin, so you could do e.g.

        \[[!table header="""
        Name | Platform ||
        | Windows | Mac | Linux
        """ data="""
        ikiwiki | ‧ | ✓ | ✓
        """]]

-- [[Jon]]

[[!tag wishlist patch]]

> This seems like weird overloading of the header parameter - it's
> table data, except when it isn't.

> > My first cut (now rebased out of existence I think) introduced a
> > new "headerblock" parameter, but trying to clearly document the
> > interaction of data/headerblock/header parameters was too awkward. -- [[Jon]]

> Perhaps
> something like this would be easier to use in practice?
> (and also more featureful :-) )
>
>     \[[!table header="2 rows 1 column" data="""
>     Name | Platform ||
>     | Windows | Mac | Linux
>     ikiwiki | no | yes | yes
>     Starcraft | yes | yes | via Wine
>     """]]

> > Thanks for your prompt feedback!
> > 
> > This would probably be good, yes, and having mixed row/column headers is
> > definitely a nice-to-have. I don't relish the prospect of writing the parser
> > but I see you've made a stab already...
> > 
> > One thing you'd lose, but it's debatable whether this is valuable, would be
> > to have the header defined in the directive, and the remaining table data
> > declared in an external CSV. -- [[Jon]]

> intended to be rendered like
>
> <table>
> <tr><th>Name</th><th colspan=2>Platform</th>
> <tr><th></th><th>Windows</th><th>Mac</th><th>Linux</th></tr>
> <tr><th>ikiwiki</th><td>no</td><td>yes</td><td>yes</td></tr>
> <tr><th>Starcraft</th><td>yes</td><td>yes</td><td>via Wine</td></tr>
> </table>
>
> (Deliberately switching to plain-text to make it more obvious
> what's a `<th>` and what's `<td>`.)
>
> Vague pseudocode for parsing `headers`
> (possibly even valid Perl, I'm not sure):
>
>     my ($header_rows, $header_cols);
>     while ($header =~ s/(\d*)\W*(\w+)//) {
>         my $n = ($1 or 0);
>         my $what = $2;
>         if ($what =~ m/rows?/) {
>             $header_rows = $n;
>         }
>         elif ($what =~ m/col(?:umn)?s?/) {
>             $header_cols = $n;
>         }
>     }
>
> and it would even be fairly easy to extend to support
> `(first|last|)\W*(\d*)\W*(\w+)` later, e.g.
> `header="1 row, first 2 cols, last column"`.
>
> --[[smcv]]

> > To be clear I think your suggestion is a good one, but my hack has
> > addressed my immediate need so it's the one I'm deploying at $ork for the
> > time being. I'm unlikely to have time to implement this solution in the
> > near future. -- [[Jon]]