<DIR>The multicolumn feature intended for <DIR> can be duplicated
by any of several means, two of which would be considered downgrades in that they
resort to more primitive or simplistic solutions. Interestingly, both of these
two means can be done within an HTML 3.2 file which this is, as well as the two
more advanced means of simulating the <DIR> multible column
format. Unfortunately, both of these means restrict one to a monospace format,
which may not be what is intended and would never be mistaken for a fully functional
<DIR> element. The first and most primitive of these would be
the <XMP> element, used thus:
Given that <XMP> was dying out and not supported past
HTML 3.2, obviously the replacement for it would work better and at least be
compliant with all the more recent standards, albeit with the same stylistic
limitations as to the overall look:
01 Delaware 02 Pennsylvania 03 New Jersey 04 Georgia 05 Connecticut 06 Massachusetts 07 Maryland 08 South Carolina 09 New Hampshire 10 Virginia 11 New York 12 North Carolina 13 Rhode Island 14 Vermont 15 Kentucky
But what was really wanted is that <DIR> could be much
more closely approximated with a feature introduced with HTML 3 (seen in both the
HTML 3.0 drafts as well as the finally released HTML 3.2 as this file is).
<DIR>Although the <TABLE> element was tailored to providing the
means to show tabular data, its division into columns and rows and cells easily
lends it to various screen formatting functions. HTML 3.2 gave the table quite a
number of necessary attributes with which to provide for such things as spacing and
border width control. To get the <DIR> look, a border width of
zero is necessary, and can be provided in either of two different ways. The first
is with the BORDER attribute which is really a style sort of command
which HTML 3.2 introduced quite a number of into the HTML itself, and much of which
gets depreciated in the face of the newer means of doing this, namely style sheets.
But first see here how it is done with HTML attributes:
| 01 Delaware | 02 Pennsylvania | 03 New Jersey | 04 Georgia | 05 Connecticut | |
| 06 Massachusetts | 07 Maryland | 08 South Carolina | 09 New Hampshire | 10 Virginia | |
| 11 New York | 12 North Carolina | 13 Rhode Island | 14 Vermont | 15 Kentucky |
In the above case the settings were prepared by including the following attributes
in the <TABLE> element starting tag:
<TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="625">
In the following example, though <TABLE> is also used, there are
no attributes to the <TABLE> tag since it is all done with style
sheets. To accomplish this, the following has been included in the <HEAD>
of this document as the style for tables and table cells:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type" CONTENT="text/css">
<STYLE>
TABLE { border-width : 0;
width : 625px; }
TD { padding : 2px;
border-width : 0;
white-space : nowrap; }
</STYLE>
The following table should look virtually like the above table, though its effects are achieved thought the style sheet commands shown above:
| 01 Delaware | 02 Pennsylvania | 03 New Jersey | 04 Georgia | 05 Connecticut | |
| 06 Massachusetts | 07 Maryland | 08 South Carolina | 09 New Hampshire | 10 Virginia | |
| 11 New York | 12 North Carolina | 13 Rhode Island | 14 Vermont | 15 Kentucky |
Unfortunately, one nice feature that would exist with the <DIR>
element is the fact that one could insert or delete an element and all the material
in the remainder of the row and in the following rows would be appropriately adjusted
to the next or previous "cells" whereas in the <TABLE> it
would all have to be manually and tediously moved, cell by cell. So one can see a
reason why <DIR> probably should be implemented, once some user
agent programmer is willing to take the time and effort.
If it has been implemented, the below should look much like the
<TABLE> examples above, but may also differ as to the number of
columns due to screen and font sizes, another detail that the above approximations
cannot duplicate, and another reason for <DIR> to be implemented:
Note here that a style sheet command has been used in this file to eliminate the bullets
for the above <DIR> listing example.
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