Re: XML and stylesheets

At 09:20 PM 12/15/96 +0000, Peter Flynn wrote:
>What's the real take on (b)'s incompatibility with DSSSL? 

b)  * 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


The result returned by the default construction-rule shall depend on the
type of node to which it is applied: 

· for a node with a char property, it shall return (make character).

We would have to change that to: "for a node with a char property, it shall
return (make character), if the node is not entirely composed of whitespace"
or "for a node with a char property, it shall rreturn (empty-sosofo)."

>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

We're presuming that the input to the stylesheet engine is the output of a
parser that doesn't have a DTD. So it must presume that all content is mixed
content (or make guesses!).

>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?

To be clear, I am using the definition of mixed content on page 320 of the
SGML handbook, any mix of data characters, elements and "other stuff" (pis,
comments, etc.). If that's evil, then SGML lends itself to nefarious purposes...

 Paul Prescod

Received on Sunday, 15 December 1996 16:36:15 UTC