Re: XML and stylesheets

Paul Prescod writes: 

   If we presume that most or all occurrences of whitespace in element
   content will be unlabelled, and undifferentiated from whitespace in
   mixed content, then only the stylesheet writer can properly remove
   source-formatting whitespace. We've said this before, but I want to
   make sure that we all have the same understanding.

That's the most succinct I've seen yet.

    * the stylesheet writer will explicitly have to have a declaration
      for every element with an element-content content-model to
      surpress the whitespace
    * OR we could make whitespace elimination the default in the
      stylesheet language in which case they would have to have an
      explicit declaration for every element that has mixed content so
      that whitespace will not be removed erroneously
    * OR the author must avoid all whitespace in element content.

   Have I forgotten any options? Are we satisfied with these ones?

What's the real take on (b)'s incompatibility with DSSSL? I still
don't grasp why we can't make white-space removal the default for
mixed-content elements, and retention the default for all others
(I think Panorama does it this way: at least, it did it to me this
evening, and I had to insert more markup in an abstruse area of the
TEI header to overcome it :-)

This approach also has the [dis?]advantage of acting as a gentle
reminder to authors that mixed content is evil :-) ... or is that seen
as too user-hostile?

///Peter

Received on Sunday, 15 December 1996 16:20:47 UTC