title: html 4.01 char - charoff attributes
body: <p>I'm trying to understand what exactly charoff attribute is for (in html 4.01 Transitional). For example, in a table one column consists of the following cells:</p>
  
  <pre><code> &lt;td&gt;1.30&lt;/td&gt;
   &lt;td&gt;10&lt;/td&gt;
   &lt;td&gt;100.2&lt;/td&gt;
   &lt;td&gt;1000.005&lt;/td&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>q1: If, for that column, I use <code>&lt;col align="char" char="."&gt;</code> 
  then what is the difference (if any) from:</p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;col align="char" char="." charoff="1"&gt;</code> or</p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;col align="char" char="." charoff="2"&gt;</code> or</p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;col align="char" char="." charoff="3"&gt;</code> ?</p>
  
  <p>q2:  the above values 1, 2, 3 are according w3schools.com approach (the charoff value "Specifies the number of characters the content will be aligned from the character specified by the char attribute"). However W3C's HTML 4.01 Specification specifies the charoff value as "length" (pixels or percentage). Which one is correct?</p>