Column width issues in DT 2.3.5

palkitt

Link to test case:
https://live.datatables.net/zetukeke/3/edit

Description of problem:
Thanks for a great product that makes life good :-)

When switching to the latest release of DT, 2.3.5, my tables got a bit messed up. I have boiled it down to the cases demonstrated in the test case.

I think things went wrong in this commit:
https://github.com/DataTables/DataTablesSrc/commit/8b2d742ca039f06ed2724bb5b4c25577c50393bd

In version 2.3.4 (try to swap in the test case), the longest string used to calc the column width was the cellString, whereas in the new version it is the stripped HTML string from cellString that is used and any formatting get lost. Also, the new function with 3 longest string parts seem to cause some trouble in the case where the string includes numeric character reference (and maybe more).

I hope this helps you on the way to the solution!