Re: Newline problems

From: Mike Brown <mike@xxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  Newline problems
Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 16:13:40 -0600 (MDT)

Vishwajit Pantvaidya wrote:
> I am using xalan for xml to xml transformation. Input xml string
> has some DOS carriage return and/or line feeds introduced by the source
> application.

XML parsers normalize CR+LF to LF, except in attribute values containing
a CR written as a numeric character reference like

get only LFs (

> The source xml string that I was trying to transform is like
> (exactly as is, including newlines)
>
> <!DOCTYPE ABC [
> ...
> ]><ABC>
> ...
> <attr>
> value</attr>
> ...
> </ABC>
>

To better understand what is going on, you should use something that helps you
create a more tangible representation of the XPath/XSLT node tree.

XPath tree visualization stylesheets you can apply to the above XML:
  http://skew.org/xml/stylesheets/treeview/ascii/
  http://skew.org/xml/stylesheets/treeview/html/
  http://www.cranesoftwrights.com/resources/showtree/

Software providing XPath tree visualization:
  http://www.topxml.com/xpathvisualizer/
  http://www.logilab.org/xpathvis/
  and various XML editors like XML SPY.

In the case of the element named 'attr', its child text node will
encapsulate the text (linefeed character) + 'value' no matter what
you do, because it is considered signficant in the XPath data model.

If you don't wish to use this text verbatim, you may find that applying the
XPath function normalize-space() to the node or string will give you the
string you wanted. The normalize-space function takes the "string-value" of
its argument, strips leading and trailing whitespace, and collapses
intermediate runs of whitespace to a single space character, returning an
XPath string object.

XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list