Re: Collapsing Whitespace in Input

On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Bruce Smith wrote:

> At 10:37 AM 3/21/98, "Russell Steven Shawn O'Connor"
> <roconnor@wronski.math.uwaterlo wrote:
> >I don't quite understand this whitespace issue.
> >
> >(1) <mtext>Theorem 1: </mtext>
> >
> >is equivalent to
> >
> >(2) <mtext>Theorem 1:</mtext>

XML parsers defer the handling of whitespace for the application
to deal with. It could even be controlled by an associated style
sheet. I suggest that the MathML spec be modified to state the
intended behaviour so that implementors can apply the appropriate
processing. 

If the intended behaviour varies from one element to the next and it
is something that is critical to the semantics of the information
then it is appropriate to provide an attribute to control it, rather
than leaving it to style sheets.

It would be nice if the XML spec allowed you to declare the
white space processing using processing instructions, as then
the task could be done by the parser and not left to the 
application. Hoever, I think it is too late for this ...

Regards,

-- Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org> http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett
phone: +44 122 578 2984 (or 2521) +44 385 320 444 (gsm mobile)
World Wide Web Consortium (on assignment from HP Labs)

Received on Wednesday, 25 March 1998 11:01:45 UTC