From: David Goodger [mailto:goodger@users.sourceforge.net]

I've added some new, simplified but limited, alternative table syntax proposals (http://docutils.sf.net/spec/rst/problems.html#tables, alternatives 3, 4, and 5), incorporating an idea from Simon Hefti. There's a better example of alternative 3 in the notes.txt file (http://docutils.sf.net/spec/notes.html#bugs).

Could people please take a look at these alternatives and tell me what they think? Thank you.

[[Disclaimer: I don't use tables much in raw text, so I don't have much of an opinion from a writer's point of view. This is basically a view in the context of being able to read the markup in raw form, which I feel is important...]] I find option (3) almost totally unreadable. Option (5) is OK, but the inability to have blank cells in column 1 makes tables like this:: +-----+-----+ | | A | +-----+-----+ | 1 | A1 | +-----+-----+ unrepresentable. And I suspect that such tables are fairly common (spreadsheet type layouts). Option (4) is the best of the 3, from that point of view. But I don't like the (mis?) use of the bullet list notation. I'd stick with the current approach. It's verbose, but very clear. The need to pad out columns to type the | characters is a (mild) nuisance. But for that, option (2) is fine. I feel that minimalism beyond that point is useless - it hampers readability and expressiveness, for no clear gain in ease of use. [If reST ever grows a way of declaring options for a document, maybe having a "table-format=boxed/minimal" option to choose between table formats (1) and (2) would be worthwhile, but I imagine tghat the price is not worth the gain. No, stick with things as they are.] Paul.