Duncan – you should find that using the “nowrap” attribute within a cell’s “td” tag has the same effect as using non-breaking spaces in that cell’s content (i.e. <td nowrap>Content Here). If you’re using more than a few words it should probably be less trouble too.

However, just setting the width attribute for a column (i.e. <td width="100">) should force that column to be of a fixed width whilst other columns without such an attribute will resize along with the table.

There are other ways it can be done but I don’t want to bog down the blog comments more than necessary. Feel free to drop me an email if you’d like mre info. I’m not sure whether bloggers get to see theemail address of commenters so you can reach me via quengiawsyo@dunflimblag.mailexpire.com
(temporary forwarding service used so I don’t get picked up by spambots).

Thanks for the response. I agree there is not normally any harm in a community of bloggers, but I have felt this week there is a group hostility towards RC Whiting. Partly this has been provoked by his spiky and sometimes even antagonistic comments, but I though Gaufrid’s response was a bit over the top, and I especially didn’t like it when it was cheered (@30). It smacks of bullying to me.

re 33. I’m naturally glad you found this comment had a charm of its own. As you will have seen, it simply followed directly on 32 as an apology and correction for a brief but apparently incorrect aside re kilts. 32 itself was I think quite germane to the puzzle. As the cliche has it ‘one thing led to another’.

I think I and several others are probably guilty of seeing the blog as a kind of community. I don’t see any great harm in this, provided it does not get excessively cosy and/or exclusive.

I think you were a bit harsh in slapping down RC Whiting earlier today.

“What value does your comment @6 add to this post? Please only comment when you have something constructive to contribute.”

All he was saying was that he found the crossword an easy solve, like Monday’s. Plenty of contributors have made similar comments over the time I have been following this blog, though they are admittedly not usually as spiky as RC Whiting’s.

Often I see posts which begin, “nothing much to say about this one…”, to which I (inwardly) comment, “so why are you here then?” I think quite a few contributors to this blog treat it as a sort of club, and perhaps feel they will have missed something, or be missed, if they do not appear on screen each day.

Sometimes off the beam contributions, such as tupu’s @33, can be far from the subject (Hugh Trevor-Roper and kilts?) but have a charm of their own. And clearly you have no problem with contributions of this sort, though what “value” it added to today’s blog I am not quite sure. RC Whiting doesn’t exhibit anything approaching charm, in fact seems to delight in getting up people’s noses, but I thought his comment @6 deserved picking up:

No, it’s not Monday today because, although I agree that I found this mostly fairly easy, the crossword had an elegance and fairness of cluing which I found almost entirely lacking in Rufus on Monday this week.

Variation at the setter/publication interface is normal. Such things as style sheets impose limits or strong guidelines on what setters can and cannot do, while papers can have markedly different target audiences. Thus you’ll see differences as a matter of course.

P.S. The blogging style is admirable – thanks, duncanshiell.