Help on "whitespace"

Hi:
can someone point me  to a document (document portion) or an article
which clearly  defines the rules for treatment of white-space and
new-line characters  within the HTML source ? Including the
rules for using  entities such as  

All my HTML books  seem to be really vague about this subject, and
I am probably stupid  'cause I don't see how to get this info from the
DTDs.

Received on Friday, 24 March 2000 13:13:47 UTC