Re: [office] white-space processing proposal

[Lars Oppermann <Lars.Oppermann@Sun.COM>]

Hi Dave,

The XML 1.1 recommendation [1] gives the following definition:
"A software module called an XML processor is used to read XML documents 
and provide access to their content and structure".
And "It is assumed that an XML processor is doing its work on behalf of 
another module, called the application".
The XML 1.1 spec is about the behavior of XML processors (e.g. parsers) 
not applications using such processors.

As Michael already pointed out, applications that are displaying and 
editing ODF files are most likely XML applications using an XML 
processor in order to parse the XML by which ODF is represented.

However, while white-space are a part of the XML info-set, they are not 
in the same way part of the info-set represented in OpenDocument, which 
uses them as word delimiters like HTML (or Lisp). There is no 
requirement for an OpenDocument editor to be an XML editor. It would be 
counter productive in my view to enforce such a notion and I believe 
that most implementors would agree with me on that.

Henceforth, this would imply, that for an OpenDocument application the 
fragments
<text:p>  this  is  the   first    fragment</text:p>
<text:p>this is the first fragment</text:p>
are equal and an ODF application should interpret them as such.

Bests,
Lars

References:

[1] XMLExtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1 (Second Edition): 1 
Introduction http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/#sec-intro

Dave Pawson wrote:
> On 18/09/06, David Faure <faure@kde.org> wrote:
> 
>> > White space is significant in XML
>> Not in ODF, except where it is specified to be, that's the point.
> 
> WHich is significant. Says to me that ODF
> is not an XML app, despite what Michael says.
> 
> 
>> > I don't think the spec should support an implementation
>> > playing around with the base XML.
>> It always did, and it always will - where whitespace isn't significant,
>> like in the above example. The change we are discussing is only a corner
>> case of it all: space at the beginning and end of <text:p>.
> 
> Corner case for you perhaps.
> For those interested in ODF as an XML format?
> No.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dave Pawson
> XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
> http://www.dpawson.co.uk


-- 
Lars Oppermann <lars.oppermann@sun.com>               Sun Microsystems
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