Re: White space or whitespace (was Re: Comments for DOM 3 Core Last Call)

On Sun, 2003-08-03 at 19:00, Susan Lesch wrote:
> At 7:30 -0400 8/1/03, John Cowan wrote:
> >Susan Lesch scripsit:
> >
> >>  White space is two words (see all prose and productions in XML 1.0
> >>  except one typo in 1998 and the Infoset since WD-xml-infoset-20010202).
> >>  I don't know why it wound up being one word in [element content
> >>  whitespace]. Do you?
> >
> >Because I myself prefer "whitespace" to "white space" (which to me suggests
> >space that is white, whatever that may be), and you didn't catch that
> >particular use.
> 
> Yes, my Infoset comment was that white space is two words "in prose."
> I have been deferring to XML Core and am sending you all a copy of this
> mail (hope that's all right).
> 
> At the moment white space in XML 1.0 is two words, and in the XML 1.1
> Candidate Recommendation it is one word. W3C uses Merriam-Webster for
> its spelling arbiter [1]. The term comes naturally from margins and
> other blank areas in book design. White makes less sense on computers
> where background colors can be anything.
> 
> If you and the XML Core Working Group have time to consider this for a
> minute and you agree that coining "whitespace" is a good idea, please
> let me know and I would be happy to:
> 
> 1. retract my DOM 3 Core comment [2]
> 2. and my XML 1.1 CR comment [3]
> 3. edit to one word in future W3C specs, and
> 4. change W3C style [4].

The name of the method isWhitespaceInElementContent has been changed to
isElementContentWhitespace to better reflect that it refers to the
Infoset property "element-content-whitespace". Same kind of change has
been applied to the "whitespace-in-element-content" parameter. Since it
is too late to rename the Infoset property, and our method and parameter
are mapped to it, we don't plan to rename them, whatever the outcome of
the whitespace vs white space is. Regarding the prose itself, we will
happily change to whatever becomes the recommendation, and thus at any
stage.

Philippe

Received on Thursday, 28 August 2003 16:36:12 UTC