Default table width

[castedo]

Many (if not most) JATS <table-wrap>/<table> elements in PubMed Central do not explicitly state their width.

As of July 2025, the CSS styling on US PubMed Central renders tables as 100% width by default, whereas Europe PMC does not have any explicit width styling. This usually is not noticeable because most tables have so much content they will be expanded to fill all 100% of the available HTML container width.

A good example case where there is a noticeable difference is the second table of PMC12002001.

On US PMC it is 100% width, is harder to read with header center text misaligned to left aligned cell text and differing significantly from the journal PDF rendering:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12002001/

In contrast Europe PMC is easier to read, more inline with the PDF, columns better aligned, but perhaps a big uglier due to the background container coloring:

https://europepmc.org/article/MED/40248387

My take is that a Baseprint JATS XML viewer should not set a 100% width, should be like Europe PMC and not US PMC. Readability is the driving priority. To the extent that Europe PMC narrow tables look uglier, it is largely due to the highly optional background coloring of full width containers around HTML tables. This suggests exploring other visual treatments of table without so much background coloring around tables (especially no background coloring).