Request for clarification on whitespace

In http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/,
the word white space is used in various places, with
different definitions, but without a clear distinction
of these definitions.

In particular, http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/text.html#h-9.1
includes ZWSP (​) in whitespace for rendering purposes
(Thai and similar languages) in content. On the other hand, this character
is not included as a separator in
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/sgmldecl.html, for obvious
purposes (it would be a bad idea to not have a visible space
between two attributes).

This has recently led to quite some confusion on unicode@unicode.org.

If this hasn't been done already, I request that you check
all the occurrences of the term 'white space' and clarify
that there are two different concepts, and which of these
concepts is used in each instance.

Thanks and regards,    Martin.

Received on Monday, 17 February 2003 19:54:29 UTC