Whitespace

For consistency in the Web platform I would like us to make the whitespace 
definitions for HTML5 and CSS match. Right now, HTML5 defines the 
following characters to be syntactic whitespace:

   U+0020 SPACE, U+0009 CHARACTER TABULATION (tab), U+000A LINE FEED (LF), 
   U+000B LINE TABULATION, U+000C FORM FEED (FF), and U+000D CARRIAGE 
   RETURN (CR)
   http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#space

CSS2.1 defines the following characters to be syntactic whitespace:

   "space" (U+0020), "tab" (U+0009), "line feed" (U+000A), "carriage 
   return" (U+000D), and "form feed" (U+000C) 

The only difference appears to be the inclusion of U+000B in the 
definition for HTML5.

HTML5's definition has a couple of minor advantages: it seems to be 
closers to what IE7 does (at least for HTML), and it allows spaces to be 
defined as the range of characters from U+0009 to U+000D plus U+0020, 
rather than having it be five separate codepoints, which may allow for 
some subtle optimisations.

Would adding U+000B to the CSS white space definition be acceptable to the 
CSSWG, or are there good reasons to exclude U+000B that should cause me to 
remove it from the HTML5 definition?

Cheers,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Tuesday, 10 June 2008 18:55:23 UTC