Re: Whitespace

Sean Mc Grath (digitome@iol.ie)
Wed, 27 Aug 1997 22:35:42 +0100


[Sean Mc Grath]
>>I await with interest some code examples
>> that illustrate XML->XML interoperability.
>
[Murray Altheim]
>By this I assume you mean interoperation between applications, not between
parsers
>and applications, since across a common API parsers should be interoperable, at
>least in theory.
Yes I mean between applications.
>...
>Browsers don't manipulate files, merely display them

What about "File-Save As"?

[Sean Mc Grath]
>> Am I completely off base in thinking that WS makes for some hairy issues
>> in XML->XML applications? What apps have been written that read/write
XML? How
>> have they handled WS integrity? Are patterns emerging that can usefully
>> become part of XML-DEV lore?
>
[Murray Altheim]
>In applications that do modify source documents (such as editors), I don't
>expect them to mangle/reformat whitespace, unless whitespace is simply
>not an issue (such as XML-as-database apps).

Why is WS not an issue for XML-as-database apps?
Because the data stream is a single line of XML?
I use Borland Brief and Borlands 32 bit grep.exe all the time.
Both have line length limits. I cannot use these with WS-free XML.

Won't our desperate Perl hackers' beloved $_ variable be significantly less
useful if it contains the *entire* document.

>...
>I imagine WYSIWYG XML
>editing/word processing applications that completely reformat whitespace
>will not be capable of proper link creation, so those would then be simply
>considered 'broken applications' and probably not be successful.
>
The market loves WYSIWYG (however "pseudo" the reality is). Isn't XML
in trouble if user-friendly (read "WYSIWYG") apps cannot do linking?

Cheers,
Sean Mc Grath

sean@digitome.com
Digitome Electronic Publishing
http://www.digitome.com