dynamic table column widths

The answers to these questions are eluding me so I'm hoping some of you
may be able to point me in the right direction.

First question...
If you've set a fixed height/width for a block-container, but the
content of the block within the container is larger (ie the text
overflows), is there a setting to make the block-container 'grow' to
continue to encompass the content?

Second question...
I'm trying to build a table whose columns have a width equal to the
block-container in the header cell.  I attempted to do this by removing
the column-width attribute from the table-column tag, but this seems to
cause random columns to size randomly, rather then to size around the
block-containers found in the cells.  I tested this by adding the
background-color attribute to the block-containers and you can
definitely see the white-space.  Is there a setting to tell the column's
cells to 'collapse' around the block-containers?

The questions are related as that I want the table to primarily have a
specific column width based upon a table-header cell width.  The most
common cell values have a single line of text, the problem is figuring
out how to handle the occasional header who's text flows to 2 or even 3
lines necessitating a wider column-width for that column.  Currently I
either get no control over column widths with tons of white-space and
the table overflowing the page when I don't specify any column-width OR
I get the initial set column widths, but have the column header content
overflow 1 or even 2 column headers when the content is longer then 1
line of text when I attempt set the column-width as fixed or using
proportional-column-width().

Any thoughts would be most welcome.

Janean Angeles