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Ken Sayers

Subject: Indent XML Tags removes wanted Whitespace
Author: Ken Sayers
Date: 06 May 2002 11:07 AM

Hello,

When we use the Indent XML Tags button, white space at the end of some of our tags is removed. I saw other postings that seem to suggest 3.0 build 44 fixed this. Am I right? We are on 3.1 build 069i, but it does not work as expected. Is there something I am missing?

Minollo I.

Subject: Re: Indent XML Tags removes wanted Whitespace
Author: Minollo I.
Date: 06 May 2002 11:11 AM

Several issues in XML indentation have been fixed in subsequent builds.
You should try installing the latest update on 3.1, BL69u available on
http://www.stylusstudio.com/update.

If you still have problems, please send us a testcase and we'll look into it.

Thanks,
Minollo

(Deleted User)

Subject: Re: Indent XML Tags removes wanted Whitespace
Author: (Deleted User)
Date: 06 May 2002 11:33 AM

At 11.19 06/05/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>From: "Ken Sayers"
>
>Hello,
>
>When we use the Indent XML Tags button, white space at the end of some of
>our tags is removed. I saw other postings that seem to suggest 3.0 build
>44 fixed this. Am I right? We are on 3.1 build 069i, but it does not
>work as expected. Is there something I am missing?

Hi Ken,
usually the indenter will replace the whitespace characters found at the
beginning and at the end of a text fragment with the formatting space.
These are the only cases where the text fragments are preserved as they are
(i.e. no formatting is done):
a) inside CDATA tags
b) inside xsl:text elements
c) inside elements having the xml:space="preserve" attribute

If you feel that there are other cases where text fragments should be
preserved, let us know, and we will consider them.

Hope this helps,

Alberto

Ken Sayers

Subject: Re: Indent XML Tags removes wanted Whitespace
Author: Ken Sayers
Date: 06 May 2002 11:41 AM

Alberto,

Thanks for the response.
Does the spec state that any processing of text inside a tag like:

xxx

should remove leading and trailing spaces? In other words, should we expect xsl processors and others to do what studio does? If so, then we will have to handle this. We were expecting that the content would be left alone when you do the indent tags.

Regards,
Ken

Ken Sayers

Subject: Re: Indent XML Tags removes wanted Whitespace
Author: Ken Sayers
Date: 06 May 2002 11:42 AM

Shoot, I put xml in the text and it got reformatted. How can I put XML tags into the post?

(Deleted User)

Subject: Re: Indent XML Tags removes wanted Whitespace
Author: (Deleted User)
Date: 06 May 2002 12:23 PM

At 11.53 06/05/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>From: "Ken Sayers"
>
>Alberto,
>
>Thanks for the response.
>Does the spec state that any processing of text inside a tag like:
>
><?xml version="1.0"?><anytag>xxx </anytag>
>
>should remove leading and trailing spaces? In other words, should we
>expect xsl processors and others to do what studio does? If so, then we
>will have to handle this. We were expecting that the content would be
>left alone when you do the indent tags.

According to the spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#sec-white-space) it's
up to the application to consider whether whitespace is by default
preserved or ignored. In a data-centric application, it's usually ignored;
in a text-processing tool, it's usually preserved.
In the specific case of XSLT processors, they should obey to
http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt#strip (text fragments made only of whitespace are
removed; leading and trailing whitespaces are preserved) but, if the
generated output is HTML, whitespace is collapsed so, according to
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html#h-9.1

In the end, whitespace handling is subject to a lot of different
interpretations: but, being the purpose of the indenter tool to format an
XML file so that the hierarchy of the tags is clearly shown by manipulating
whitespace characters, it tends to behave more like a data-centric tool,
while keeping an eye on the known XSLT keyword that is known to manipulate
text fragments so that the output of an XSLT transformation done on the
indented text is equivalent to the same transformation done on the original
document.
If you find a situation like that (e.g. the HTML generated by the XSLT
transformation is broken), let us know, and we will change the indenter
accordingly.

Alberto

P.S. Unfortunately the web board software we use has been designed more for
HTML than for XML, so it will not display the XML fragments you write (but
you can see them in the source for the page, and if you subscribe to have
each message sent you by e-mail you will see it with no problem). You will
have to escape the "<" characters by using the "<" entity, or by
using another character (e.g. "{")

Ken Sayers

Subject: Re: Indent XML Tags removes wanted Whitespace
Author: Ken Sayers
Date: 06 May 2002 01:03 PM

Alberto,

I would think that the indenter should use the least invasive choice and leave all white space inside a text only tag like:

{x}yyyy {/x}

This text is meaningful to us. As a fall back, you could make an option available to choose if white space should be affected in these situations.

For now, we can't use the indenter for our files. This will be very difficult to bare.

Regards,
Ken

(Deleted User)

Subject: Re: Indent XML Tags removes wanted Whitespace
Author: (Deleted User)
Date: 06 May 2002 02:54 PM

At 13.15 06/05/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>From: "Ken Sayers"
>
>Alberto,
>
>I would think that the indenter should use the least invasive choice and
>leave all white space inside a text only tag like:
>
>{x}yyyy {/x}
>
>This text is meaningful to us. As a fall back, you could make an option
>available to choose if white space should be affected in these situations.

It could be possible not to trim spaces (i.e. character 32 in the ASCII
chart), but only tabs and newlines; would this be acceptable for you?

Alberto

Ken Sayers

Subject: Re: Indent XML Tags removes wanted Whitespace
Author: Ken Sayers
Date: 06 May 2002 04:11 PM

Alberto,

I am not sure what you meant.

We can live with non space white space being removed. We have spaces at the end that must be preserved.

Ken

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