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Difference between "normalize" and "canonicalize"?

• From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>
• To: "'xml-dev@l...'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:38:20 -0500

Hi Folks,

Consider these two sentences:


1. When an XML parser reads in an XML document it normalizes all line breaks to \n.  

2. A canonicalizer tool will canonicalize empty elements to start-tag, end-tag pairs.


Both "normalize" and "canonicalize" seem to mean:

   Put into a standard form.

Do they in fact mean the same thing? If so, why have two terms? Why not have just one term?

/Roger

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: Difference between "normalize" and "canonicalize"?
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>
  • Re: Difference between "normalize" and "canonicalize"?
    • From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@C...>
  • RE: Difference between "normalize" and "canonicalize"?
    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
  • Re: Difference between "normalize" and "canonicalize"?
    • From: Chris Burdess <dog@b...>