Re: [office] white-space processing proposal

["Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com>]

Thanks Michael.
Couple of additional comments inline.


> > 1. Under what conditions does this happen, is it only when a document
> > is displayed?
>
> It is at least when the document is displayed. We make no assumption about
> the data models that ODF applications use internally, so we also don't make
> any assumption what happends where.
>
> > 2. Is this visual presentation only?
>
> See above.

So the visual presentation may not match that of a person
accessing the xml content directly?




>
>
> > 3. Is this whitespace processing permanent, i.e. is the source file
> > modified?
>
> This depends on the application. All Word processors I know don't keep the
> source code, and don't operate on an XML model. They create the XML source
> code from scratch again if a document is saved. They therefore may even
> insert new white-space characters to make the XML source look nice.

So a round trip contents.xml, into OpenOffice and back to xml without
modification (by the user) may change the xml.




>
> > (If so, can we state that ODF is an xml application?   see
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/#sec-white-space )
>
> I think you mean "xml processor". If so: No, ODF is not an xml processor. It
> is an application (see http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/#sec-intro)

I think the point I'm taking away, which I don't like, is that any ODF
implementation
can modify the whitespace of an XML entity whether I want it or not.






> >
> >> These white-space processing rules shall enable authors to use
> >> white-space
> >> characters to improve the readability of the XML source of an
> >> OpenDocument
> >> document in the same way as they can use them in [HTML4]."
> >
> >
> > Is the reference to  the HTML specs necessary/helpful?
>
> Yes, I think so. A reference to HTML makes it easier to understand what the
> rules are, and allows authors to re-use their experience with HTML. What we
> may do is to write HTML instead of [HTML4].

Yet that is quite different to this case? Again you appear to be
talking about an application.
Are all HTML applications alike in their whitespace processing?
  None of the browsers I use modify the source file.





>
> > Is there any conflict with the HTML4 that could cause a dispute?
>
> I don't think so, but if we write "HTML" instead of "[HTML4]" we should be on
> the safe side.

Visually? I don't think this either clear or 'safe'.

> >
> > Why is this only applicable to a paragraph element, and not to list
> > content,
> > table cells etc? I.e. all CDATA content.
>
> List and table cells contain paragraphs, so the rules apply there as well.

So should it be generalised to all CDATA content to clarify?

regards

-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk