the problem is it isnt just the table element, it is the thead,tbody,td,th elements as well Complex interactive tables need a great number of elements to make

the problem is it isnt just the table element, it is the thead,tbody,td,th elements as well Complex interactive tables need a great number of elements to make them run and these wont conform to the standards of using a table (you cant just put a div inside a tbody element) but that is exactly what you would need to to to get a table with a virtual DOM to work correctly. There are a lot of different styling tweaks that would need to be overriden for each element, some of which arnt consistent across each browser. Also people have a tendency to put styles on the generic table tab to style tables across the site. if Tabulator was to then be used on the page, it could have any number of unknown CSS properties set on it, so would essentially have to look at overriding all possible style properties. where as no one generically styles divs or spans and they come with very little built in styling making them the ideal choice for a library that wants to keeps its functionality isolated from the rest of the site