Date: Sat, 9 Oct 1999 19:33:08 +0100 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> Cc: John Baldwin <jobaldwi@vt.edu>, Jesus Rodriguez <jesusr@ncsa.es>, Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.ORG>, FreeBSD Documentation Project <doc@FreeBSD.ORG>, Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Subject: Re: Two spaces OK Message-ID: <19991009193308.D21521@catkin.nothing-going-on.org> In-Reply-To: <19991008154459.C33390@mithrandr.moria.org>; from Neil Blakey-Milner on Fri, Oct 08, 1999 at 03:44:59PM %2B0200 References: <XFMail.991008110503.jesusr@ncsa.es> <199910081051.GAA86553@server.baldwin.cx> <19991008154459.C33390@mithrandr.moria.org>
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On Fri, Oct 08, 1999 at 03:44:59PM +0200, Neil Blakey-Milner wrote: > If noone has any other evidence, I'd like to propose the more > readable form. > > I get the impression it just ignores a starting and ending empty > lines - blank (ie, with spaces) lines still show up. The stylesheets we *currently* use used to consider the whitespace at the beginning and end to be significant, and would include them in the output. Norm stopped them doing this some time back. He can do this with SGML docs, because, IIRC, the whitespace handling inside an element is allowed to be flexible. Should we ever want to switch to different stylesheets (or perhaps allow people to use SGML editors that have their own stylesheets) there's no guarantee that they'll be as flexible. In addition, I think it's likely that at some point we'll transit to an XML based approach, rather than an SGML based approach. This transition point is somewhere in the future, and I couldn't predict when it will happen. However, it's a fairly safe bet that it will happen. XML is much stricter about white space inside elements. If it exists then it has to be preserved, and passed on to the application that's doing the final formatting. The application would then have to know that certain elements are 'special', and that leading white space can be stripped. If you want your documentation to be processed the same way by all these different applications then you'll need to go around configuring all these applications with this knowledge. With this in mind, I'd prefer that we sacrificed a little bit of readability in the documentation source in return for some future proofing and simpler interoperability with other apps. If you look through the Handbook you'll doubtless find areas where I've been inconsistent about this. If anyone's looking for a background task to work on, fixing these would be handy. . . N -- PS: Sorry for the delay in replying. What with work, buying a house, moving in to the house, fixing the plumbing in the house, and paying the bills, I've been a little busy recently. I'm back to e-mail now, and catching up. . . To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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