Re: [docbook-apps] Treatment of tabs in programlisting in FO output

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 22:44 2003 05 09 +1000, Michael Day wrote:
>Paul Grosso wrote:
>> In short, I don't believe there is any reason to think that
>> tab characters will be treated by an XSL-FO composition
>> engine as anything other than a space.
>
>CSS treats tabs properly with appropriate tab stops in elements with the
>whitespace property set to "pre".
>
>See the CSS2 Revision 1 draft on the subject:
>http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-CSS21-20030128/text.html#white-space-prop


Thanks for this reference, Michael.

This January 2003 working draft post dates the XSL spec and 
is not yet reference-able (given it is only a working draft).  
The version of CSS2 on which XSL is based does not say anything 
about tab characters, so I maintain that the current XSL spec 
gives no reason to believe that tab characters will be treated 
by an XSL-FO implementation as anything other than a space.

However, the XSL WG is starting to look into producing an 
XSL 1.1 version of the spec, so this would be a good time to
review tab character processing.  Personally, I fear that
the issues involved can become fairly complex, and I would
probably just pipe my Makefiles (or whatever) through some
program that expanded tabs before I tried to compose them,
but I will suggest that the XSL FO SG consider this issue.

paul