Create a table with one of the cells having a horizontal alignment on a character. Click in that cell and bring up the properties pane for that cell. Notice that the character isn't visible so it can't be changed.

given bug #2212, I question if we should support this in our dialog at all.

I discussed the issue with layout and they said we should supply the UI as we should. This is very easy to fix -- didn't set "hidden" attribute on textfield during startup. Patch is forthcomming.

Note that fix also changes "collapse" to "hidden", which is what we should use to hide elements.

The above patch doesn't work; in fact, I can no longer set the character at all. I still think that we shouldn't let users try to set this. It doesn't lay out correctly which makes us look dumb when the user sets this.

But if we remove UI, what do we do when we encounter this attribute in an existing page? We don't want to convert it to only those we want to show.

wouldn't it show up in the advanced dialog? and can't it be displayed in the text filed for the values but just not be a selectable item?

The point is if "char" is the attribute value, what do we show in the menu? A menu must contain all possible attribute values.

Last attachment fixes problem with not getting initial "char" attribute value. Upon further thought, "collapse" does seem to be the right attribute to use.

I can understand wanting to show all legal, known values. but if we do not have the underlying infrastructure to display the alignment corectly, maybe we shouldn't allow folks to pick it.

The last fix removes support for align="char" in the table dialog. If this is encountered in an existing page, we will not change it unless user selects an alignment from the horizontal alignment menulist.

btw, I took the sample from the spec: <TABLE border="1"> <COLGROUP> <COL><COL align="char" char="."> <THEAD> <TR><TH>Vegetable <TH>Cost per kilo <TBODY> <TR><TD>Lettuce <TD>$1 <TR><TD>Silver carrots <TD>$10.50 <TR><TD>Golden turnips <TD>$100.30 </TABLE> and tried it in 4.x, 6.0 and IE 5 and none of them support the function. ANd just as an fyi, the spec has this to say about char: char = character [CN] This attribute specifies a single character within a text fragment to act as an axis for alignment. The default value for this attribute is the decimal point character for the current language as set by the lang attribute (e.g., the period (".") in English and the comma (",") in French). User agents are not required to support this attribute. Note the last sentence.

sr=sfraser

UI for "char" is removed.

verified in 4/5 build.