XSchema Spec Section 2.2, Draft 1

[John Cowan]

Paul Prescod wrote:

> > What "festering hole"?  XML's solution is simple: all whitespace is
> > meaningful, just as all non-whitespace is meaningful.
> 
> That is not true. Some whitespace is "insignificant." You can only find
> out which whitespace falls into this category with a validating parser,
> however.

I think that the notion of "insignificant" whitespace is a sop, partly
to SGML, partly to people (like me, I admit) who want to pretty-print
XML, and partly to element-blind processes that want to be able to
ignore pretty-printing without having to know what they are doing.

Processes that attach semantics to particular elements will know
whether or not to ignore whitespace, because they will expect either
element content or mixed content for each container element.

> Whitespace
> verifies as #PCDATA if #PCDATA is allowed at a particular point.
> If #PCDATA is NOT allowed at a particular point, the whitespace is
> ignored for the purposes of verifying.

Just so.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan at ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)

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