Whitespace

[David G. Durand]

At 4:01 AM -0500 8/26/97, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>The following mechanisms are consistent with the current spec and do not
>require changes:
>	1. stylesheets. The authors can describe how they expect stylesheet
>	processors to treat their documents.
>	2. PIs (e.g. <?WHITESPACE ... ?>
>	3. additional elements in the DTD (e.g. NEWLINE).
>	4. implicit conventions (i.e. 'always replace CR/LF with CR').
>

>(Have I missed anything?)
>> of conventions for specific classes of user agents (e.g., web
>> browsers) is useful, but I feel that it's my obligation to point out
>            ^^^^^^^^^
>Some people think this is a waste of time.  Perhaps it may turn out to be.
>Unlike the discussions on the spec, this group has no stated goals and exists
>to provide mutual support for those developing XML applications. If a number
>of people feel this is worth discussing,  then see let's see if they can
>achieve anything. If *they* wish to spend the time trying to do this, it
>needn't waste other people's ... :-)

>My own feelings are that only mechanisms 1 and 2 above are likely to find
>favour. I think that PIs can be further explored in this discussion.
>(Perhaps I should not have used <?XML-WHITESPACE .. ?> as this would (I think)
>require WG approval, so I would rephrase this as <?XDEV-WHITESPACE .. ?>)
>Given that, it seems possible to include PI statements within the document as
>the how the author intends the whitespace to be treated.

I'm afraid that I must ask what these are to be used for. I used to think
that this was a problem, and now I don't see how we really need these
declarations. They only seem to be relevant for typesetting, and if
typesetting is the task, then you'll only get correct results witha
well-known DTD or stylesheet in any case -- so why have the declarations.
I'm not concerned about readers taking correct stylesheets and later
mucking them up -- that will always be possible.

>It may be argued that this can be done better with stylesheets. Perhaps I'm
>conservative, but I see PIs embedded in a document as 'being part of the
>document' to a greater extent than stylesheets which are more likely to be
>changed by people other than the document's authors.

My problem is that I'm no longer able to see why this information has to go
with the document... I can't think of a case where it's necessary, and tons
of other information about the meanings of tags, etc, is not also necessary.

Also, since XML passes all whitespace, the only case we can deal with is
one where its essential to _ignore_ whitespace in the source document.

   -- David

_________________________________________
David Durand              dgd at cs.bu.edu  \  david at dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science        \  Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/   \  Dynamic Diagrams
--------------------------------------------\  http://dynamicDiagrams.com/
MAPA: mapping for the WWW                    \__________________________



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