On Apr 18, 2005, at 9:31 PM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
False. Parsers are not under any obligation to respect xml:space, unless they are governed by some other specification that says they are. -Tim
How can a spec other than the XML spec govern what XML processors do? Or is xml:space supposed to be handled somewhere between the XML processor and the app?
An Atom processor, for example, is larger than the XML processor, which is a glorified input buffer and is anyhow forbidden from removing white space in element content. xml:space is a value which may be used upstream in an XML transmission chain to express an intent about white-space handling to those further downstream in the chain.
It wouldn't break any rules for Atom to impose requirements on Atom-processing software as regards the handling of xml:space. However, I don't think we should. The semantics are clear: someone upstream thinks this white-space is specific. Whoever reads the Atom feed is at liberty to respect or to ignore xml:space. Whatever we say, full-text indexers, for example, are guaranteed to ignore it. I don't see where we can add any value. -Tim
