Re: RFE: Let XXE react to width of <col> elements

On 31.07.2026 16:14, by Hussein Shafie:

> Leif wrote:
>> I will give you two reasons for that conclusion. Or, if you wish, two 
>> bugs to fix:
>>
>>     1. XXE does **not react** to styling of the width of the <col> 
>> element. XXE only reacts to the styling of the width of the 
>> <colgroup> element. 
>
> Bug fixed. See attached screenshot. Excerpts of XXE Change History:
> ---
> Bug fixes:
>
> * XXE ignored the width specification found in XHTML col element when 
> this col element was a child of a colgroup element and when the width 
> of the column was specified using the style attribute (e.g. 
> style="width: 20%"). Note that, if allowed by the XHTML DTD or schema, 
> using the col/@width attribute to specify the width of a column worked 
> fine.
> --- 

It is just super that you have fixed the styling of <col/>!

NB: Note that there are 4 CSS properties that apply to <col/> – border, 
visibility, background-color and width: 
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/col#usage_notes


>>     2. Another <col> issue that ought to be fixed (even if  it is 
>> less important than making XXE render the styled with of <col> 
>> elements), is the following bug:
>>
>>     When I edit an attribute of a <col> element, I do the following: 
>>         I click on the <colgroup> element to «open it» and select a 
>> <col> element,         then I locate the attribute I want to edit, 
>>         then I edit it,         and finally I press Enter or Return 
>> to finalize the attribute editing.         EXPECTED: That everything 
>> visually stays in place.         ACTUALLY: XXE (visually) closes the 
>> <colgroup> element, so that I loose (visual) track of which <col> 
>> element I was editing. With the consequence that I must open the 
>> <colgroup> again to visually locate the <col> I was editing. If there 
>> are multiple <col> elements to edit, this becomes quite tedious
>>
>
> Sorry but we currently don't see how to remove this annoyance.


Once CSS styling works, I would typically style <col> via CSS inside 
<style>. Hence this should be possible to live with.

But why couldn’t the collapse/expand of <colgroup> work like 
collapse/expand of a <section> with a  h1-h6 element? Adding an 
attribute value to a child of a <section> does not cause the <section> 
to collapse – or expand. Or perhaps this relies on the element having 
collapes:no applied to itself, like you describe below?


> A not really satisfying workaround would be to open a sample XHTML 
> document of yours and select "Option|Customize Configuration|Customize 
> CSS Style Sheet" 
> (https://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/help/customizeStylesheetDialog.html) 
> and add the following CSS rule (see attached screenshot):
>
> ---
> colgroup,
> col {
>     collapsed: no;
> }
> ---
> (collapsed, a CSS extension property is documented here: 
> https://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/csssupport/collapsible_blocks.html 
> )
>
> This changes applies once for all for all the XHTML documents sharing 
> the same XXE configuration (e.g. the "XHTML 5" configuration) as the 
> sample XHTML document you just opened.


Leif Halvard Silli


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