203875 - Composer changes MultiLengths of "*" to "1*"

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: DOM: Serializers, defect, P5)

Description

[Ernest Cline]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

While these are supposed to be the same, the simple fact is that IE can handle
"*" and can't handle "1*".  Not only that, but "*" is shorter.  If anything,
composer should be changing "1*" MultiLengths to "*", not the other way around,
even if IE did not have that bug.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Enter any HTML code with a MultiLength of "*" for a width value used in it.

Actual Results:  
Composer changes it to "1*".

Expected Results:  
Leave it alone.

Comment 1

[Kathleen :Brade]

-->DOM to Text Conversion

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
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Comment 3

[Ernest Cline]

I still get this bug in Composer.

If one enters <col width="*"> as source it converts it into <col width="1*">
which while theoretically equivalent according to the standards, isn't, as
mentioned in my initial bug report.

Comment 4

[Jens Stutte [:jstutte]]

Bulk-downgrade of unassigned, >=3 years untouched DOM/Storage bug's priority.

If you have reason to believe this is wrong, please write a comment and ni :jstutte.

Comment 5

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

Hmm, I didn't know the special width value... It's not in current HTML Standard anymore, but it was defined by HTML 4.01:

Proportional specifications (e.g., width="3*") refer to portions of the horizontal space required by a table. If the table width is given a fixed value via the width attribute of the TABLE element, user agents may render the table incrementally even with proportional columns.

However, if the table does not have a fixed width, user agents must receive all table data before they can determine the horizontal space required by the table. Only then may this space be allotted to proportional columns.
<snip>
Once the (visual) user agent has received the table's data: the available horizontal space will be alloted by the user agent as follows: First the user agent will allot 30 pixels to columns one and two. Then, the minimal space required for the third column will be reserved. The remaining horizontal space will be divided into six equal portions (since 2* + 1* + 3* = 6 portions). Column four (2*) will receive two of these portions, column five (1*) will receive one, and column six (3*) will receive three.

<TABLE>
<COLGROUP>
   <COL width="30">
<COLGROUP>
   <COL width="30">
   <COL width="0*">
   <COL width="2*">
<COLGROUP align="center">
   <COL width="1*">
   <COL width="3*" align="char" char=":">
<THEAD>
<TR><TD> ...
...rows...
</TABLE>

Okay, so, 1* should be reasonable even in the old spec. Although I don't know this is handled by current layout module, the editor module does not need to save only one byte with the invalid form.