>Comments below. > >[ snip ] > >3. Final discussion comment: XSL formatters _do_ ignore the presence of >linefeeds (in one of several different interpretations of "ignore") by >default. By choosing 'preserve' for linefeed-treatment you _are_ basically >doing a <PRE> operation, with respect to linefeeds. So I don't see much of a >difference or any grounds for objection. > >But I do see an argument for a semantic linebreak in the source. Relying on >linefeeds or the lack thereof in source XML is a bit problematic.
Thank you. I don't exactly have a problem with the mechanism itself, more that it is too complicated for most people to understand without a tutor (as I found). This can be countered by an argument (which I accept) that .fo files are usually machine produced, and are not pretty printed or edited. Against that, (1) the fragments that make up an .fo file most certainly are, and (2) there is no bar to creating a .fo file directly of by some mechanism other than XSLT. >4. normalize-space(): The XPath function takes tabs, spaces, carriage >returns and linefeeds and does what you say. I think that the existing >string functions in XPath/XSLT are not sufficiently powerful to easily do >what you wish; OTOH the activities of the XSL people to come out with a new >XSLT and XPath include regular expressions (see >http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery-operators/) so this is one way in which you >could do what you want. Thank you. I am simply not that familiar with XPath. The issue arose, as you might have guessed by an editor assuming that it could add any amount of white space at the beginning or end of an element (quite reasonable in the XML world), and I had assumed that there would be a matching function that would remove it. Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill. I feel that this is a result of trying to standardise too early, id est without sufficient, or sufficient duration of experience. Ben. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]