RE: [libxml++] keek blancs.

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> From: Christophe de VIENNE [mailto:cdevienne alphacent com] 
> Hi,
> 
> Not keeping blancs at parsing time or adding some when 
> writing to indent is 
> breaking the XML specifications.
> However I think it can be usefull to do so. For example in my 
> application I do 
> have XML files in which I have no content nodes, and that I 
> have to edit by 
> hand. Having them indented automatically is _very_ much 
> easier than to 
> include artificial content nodes. I'm sure I'm not alone in this case.
> 
> So I propose to modify the API of libxml to give the 
> possibility not to keep 
> blanks (xmlKeepBlanksDefault option in libxml).

To start with I think the whole keep_blanks name is very confusing. We seem
to be dealing with 2 things here:

1. _Ignoring_ significant white space when parsing the document.
2. _Adding_ indents when writing the document.

Those are easy to understand. If we add the features then I think we should
add them separately and with meaningful names in the API.

I think other parsers add 2. as some kind of pretty-printing method. I don't
know if any other parsers add 1.
1. does seem much more XML-spec-breaking than 2.

Murray Cumming
murrayc usa net
www.murrayc.com