Use colspans in generating number of columns

[IanMayo]

One file contains an 8-column table.

We're mocking it in wales_composite.html. We mock it by inserting a row of 8 cells.

But, there are not any rows with 8 cells in the data. There are rows with 2, 4 or 6 cells. The 6 cell rows have two "colspan=2" cells - to force the layout engine to accept 8 columns.

I have mocked this pattern in this PR #513

[robintw]

Is this only present in one file? Can we edit the source, or put some kind of tag/note in the file to tell us to treat it as an 8 column table? The table conversion code quite reasonably assumes that the maximum number of columns in any row of the table is the number of columns that table has. The source HTML table makes no sense to have an 8 column table without 8 columns anywhere within it. I think that extending our table code to try and handle columns like this will make it a lot more fragile, and more likely to break on other tables that it currently processes correctly.

What do you think? Can we edit the file so that it only has the number of columns it actually uses?

[robintw]

Actually, I have one idea that might make it work without being too fragile. It'll rely on assuming that there is a cell that is colspanned across the entire width of the table. I'll have a little go at it when I've got time.

[robintw]

Yes, this idea works. I'll tidy it up and do a PR.

[robintw]

Fixed in #511