Adam Flinton wrote: > > To quote from the oxygen xml page above: > > "Although writing documents with no indentation is a perfectly > acceptable practice, it makes editing difficult and is error prone. It > also makes the identification of exact error positions difficult. > Formatting and Indenting, also called "Pretty Print", enables the XML > documents to be neatly arranged in a manner that is consistent and > promotes easier reading." > but no-one is advocating creating documents with no whitespace, particularly, although many tools do, since the XML is intended for consumption by computers, not people. But whitespace between Elements is not the same as white space in an Element value. > > > >> Sure, but the tool should never add whitespace to a value, that is not the >> norm, it is simply wrong. >> >> >> > > Not true. > > See above wrt Oxygen XML's view. I can quote you the relevant sections > from the XML docs e.g. > > http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-1-20010502/ > > http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#rf-whiteSpace > well what this tells me is that if the whitespace facet of the type in a schema is set to 'preserve' then the whitespace is not changed. What happens to whitespace _between_ Elements doesn't matter too much (i.e. between tag end and new tag start), since this is just a question of indented formatting. What the debate here is about, as far as I understand, is about whitespace within textual Element values - which should of course be preserved, else XML can't be used to send normal documentary text around. > > If however you are looking to create a bullet proof serialization in XML > where the values matter then it is a poor design. > well - let's have some evidence of that. If it is true, then change needs to be considered. But let's have the hard evidence first.
- thomas beale * *
