from_html fails with tables that use colspan about prettytable HOT 3 CLOSED

Thanks for the report and sorry for the slow response time.

I agree that the current behviour is sub-optimal, if only because the cause of 
the problem is not very explicit: ideally the exception message should 
explicitly identify the use of colspan as the cause of the problem, so a user 
is not left scratching their head.

As for the prospect of actually parsing a colspan-using table instead of 
failing explicitly, I am not sure how I feel about the first option you 
present, i.e.:

+---------+---------+
| Field 1 | Field 2 |
+---------+---------+
|   one   |   two   |
|       three       |
+---------+---------+

Doing this would require a fairly drastic change to the way PrettyTable 
represents table contents.  The other option would be quicker and easier, and I 
think it represents a better trade-off between cost involved and utility 
gained, given that I think this is a relatively rare issue (this is the first 
report I've received).  I'll try to get this into the next release.

This is now implemented in trunk.  It yields the second kind of table you 
suggested, i.e. blank columns after the first column, up to the appropriate 
number.  Please feel free to test this feature and provide feedback.