It certainly doesn't look right as Some Text and maybe some more text are split within the root node by other nodes.
I mean what you get by referencing myObj.root? Would expect both text text values? "This e-mail is from Reed Exhibitions (Gateway House, 28 The Quadrant, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 1DN, United Kingdom), a division of Reed Business, Registered in England, Number 678540. It contains information which is confidential and may also be privileged. It is for the exclusive use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient(s) please note that any form of distribution, copying or use of this communication or the information in it is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error please return it to the sender or call our switchboard on +44 (0) 20 89107910. The opinions expressed within this communication are not necessarily those expressed by Reed Exhibitions." Visit our website at http://www.reedexpo.com -----Original Message----- From: Adrian Lynch To: CF-Talk Sent: Fri Jun 15 18:12:30 2007 Subject: RE: setting xml encoding So are you saying that the following is wrong? <root> Some text <a-tag/> Maybe some more text <another-tag/> </root> Because it's more or less the same as the following surely? <root> <a-tag/> <another-tag/> </root> Adrian -----Original Message----- From: Brad Wood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 15 June 2007 18:02 To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: setting xml encoding > Have I changed the actual data being transferred one iota? Yes. The second example has two text nodes within root, and two text nodes within book. I'm not talking about a technical standpoint, I'm talking about from a practical standpoint. I still maintain that there is no practical reason to include the white space in the xml. > Give me a SINGLE example of an application which should act > differently based on the second xml string as opposed to the > first. Maybe that example exists, and I am more than willing > to accept it, but I haven't seen it yet. I gave you an example: haikus and other poems. If you were to write an application that displays those, it would have to treat whitespace as meaningful. A haiku is not XML. You did not give me an example of an XML string with white space between the tags in which an application would need it to handle the data. (Note, I am not talking about white space between a corresponding start and end tag as that would actually make sense since it is part of the data being transferred. I speak of white space after one ending tag and before another starting tag) This discussion is not about haikus, limericks, or iambic pentameter. It is about xml as a means to define and transfer data and the fact that I have seen no actual, real-life, honest-to-goodness reason whatsoever that would require an application to be aware of white space between the nodes to be able to correctly receive, and process the data contained within the XML. Let's say I were to store a haiku in an XML string. Regardless of whether each line was stored separately, or if it was stored as one large string, the text would reside in the value of a tag's attribute or the inner text of one tag. In both of those scenarios white space IS significant since it is within a tag. That is not the scope of this discussion however. The white space outside of tags is what we are talking about. > How does an XML parser know whether whitespace is significant or not? Because its an XML PARSER! By virtue of the fact that xml is the type of string it is parsing it can be drawn that significant data is NOT stored outside of tags, and therefore any characters outside of a tag are one of two things: 1) illegal 2) meaningless. The two xml strings below are NOT equal in my opinion: <tag1> <tag2 /> <tag3 /> </tag1> <tag1><extra_tag_you_dont_want><tag2 /><extra_tag_you_dont_want><tag3 /><extra_tag_you_dont_want></tag1> That is exactly what Mozilla does. It takes the 2 children of tag1 and adds three siblings. That may seem right from some technical, scientific, sterile point of view, but seems downright wrong to me. Because we know: 1) The string is xml 2) XLM does not store data OUTSIDE of a tag 3) Elements of an xml document are defined by a "<tagname>" syntax Why would a parser create elements out of white space? Strictly speaking from a practical point of view, when in the history of XML has someone received a string of text which is known to be xml, and needed data from outside of the tags? I don't think that has ever happened. I guess it should be noted that I am not necessarily arguing about how XML parsing is currently defined as much as I am how I think it SHOULD be defined if you were to logically think through how it is used. I think the "correct" interpretation that Mozilla conforms to is wrong because it implicitly creates un-wanted elements out of characters which are NOT supposed to designate the existence of elements. ~Brad ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| ColdFusion MX7 and Flex 2 Build sales & marketing dashboard RIAâs for your business. 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