RE: /WD-xpath-datamodel-20030502/

> / David.Pawson@rnib.org.uk was heard to say:
> | <quote>
> | 3.7 Comments, Processing Instructions, and Whitespace
> | Although the data model is able to represent comments, processing
> | instructions, and insignificant whitespace, preservation of 
> this information
> | may be unnecessary and onerous for some applications.
> | </quote>
> |
> | I am concerned about the 'may' in the first para, wrt XSLT 
> applications.


> 
> A data model must be consistent, but it can be constructed any way you
> like. There are no doubt implementations that will choose to discard
> syntactic artifacts that they consider insignificant. Users who find
> them significant will have to choose implementations accordingly.
> 
> Some applications will be utterly unable to preserve 
> information about,
> for example, comments that occur inside content with a simple type.
> 
> | I'd hope they would be required to be processed in an xslt 
> application;
> | If such an application is using this data model, then how 
> can that be
> | enforced?
> 
> It can't. Choose an implementation that does.

With the complexity of 2.0 I doubt there will be many implementations
to choose from Norm.



> 
> | E.g. I'd hope that the determination of the significance of 
> white space is
> | the choice of the end user. 
> 
> On this point, I think you're probably confusing xsl:strip-space and
> xsl:preserve-space with the XML 1.0 notion of "significant
> whitespace". They aren't related.

No. 


> 
> End users have no control over significant whitespace, that's entirely
> a consequence of how the DTD or schema is written. Whitespace in
> elements with element content is insignificant. (That's what
> "insignificant whitespace" means.)

<programlisting>
  pcdata 
   <emphasis>This instruction</emphasis>
</programlisting>

To me this should be an end user decision.
I want the white space to be retained when I output this in html.
<pre>
  pcdata
   <b>This instruction</b>
</pre>

Am I wrong?

> 
> It may be that some applications will want to preserve this, but
> there's no way that all implementors are going to agree to do so. The
> data model doesn't say you have to throw it away, only that it's
> outside the scope of the data model to say whether or not you do.
> 
> | Hence I disagree with this being outside the scope of this 
> data model.
> 
> Has my explanation helped convince you?

Thanks for the explanation.
  I made a comment yesterday (apparently too general to be
responded to), that there are a worrying number of implementor
dependent options for this to be rightly called a specification.
Too many options is really going to screw interop.
  Is this another one?

regards DaveP 

   

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Received on Tuesday, 20 May 2003 03:15:03 UTC