Applying a style to multiple table cells corrupts the table

[Martin Kou]

When editing a large table a common use case is for the user to select multiple rows and/or cells and then apply formatting. Applying a font or changing the font size works as expected - the change is applied to the contents of each selected cell individually.

However, applying a style to multiple cells does NOT work as expected. For example, I created a 3x2 table and populated it with test data. I then selected the lower 4x4 grid and applied a style. The problem is that a single <span> tag is generated to span multiple <td> tags. The end result is that the table structure is corrupted.

Following is the resulting HTML from this scenario:

<table width="200" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="1"
border="1" align="" summary="">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Steve</td>
<td>Nies</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<span class="normal">
<td>Sheri</td>
<td>Nies</td>
<td>Jenny</td>
<td>Nies</td>
</span>
</tr>
<tr>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Notice that the single <span> tag encompasses multiple <td> tags (i.e., the cells that were selected by the user).