Having to make an include page for each table, and the separation that it puts between the heading and the content of the table, is simply not an acceptable solution. This is also a legitimate bug for me, as I have a use case where I want to have three separate page lists composited into one table. The included-page workaround simply won't work there. Furthermore, this particular use case requires the use of an [[iftags]] element, which requires that the "separate" property be set to "yes/true" to work properly. The included-page solution specifies that "separate" be set to "no/false."
Please actually fix the functionality of the table elements so that table composition works as one would expect it to work.