Test Design Notes for wvHtml

Brian Marick

Early Design Notes

When first testing the wv Word importing code, I started by trying out a modestly complex table. I found some failures and analysed them. In the process, I came up with these design notes. I will incorporate them into my later design.

• Empty table cells are sometimes not displayed by at least Netscape and IE. For example, a 2x2 table where all entries are empty is displayed as a single cell. Netscape will show cells that have both <div> and <p> tags but no text; IE appears to require some non-whitespace text. Check how a variety of empty cells in various positions, with various surrounding cells, translate from Word to HTML. Note that the original table example shows empty cells that display differently in IE than in Netscape. (This is entirely a matter of HTML export; probably has nothing to do with Word import.)
• Check interactions of table cell colors, table background colors, and page background colors. Consider especially clear cells (ones where the background is supposed to "show through"). (Any Word import implications, or is this just a matter of HTML export?) Later note: for an example of differences between wvHTML export and Word export, see Part 3 of the case study. That also shows that IE 5.0 honors the white paragraph background, while Netscape 4.5 does not. Should wvHtml be generating a white paragraph background?
• When Word has a black cell background, and the cell contains black characters, the characters are displayed in reverse video. What's appropriate in the HTML output?