Re: [xml] Formatting output

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 07:45:53AM -0800, Brett Robichaud wrote:
> I am no xml expert or purist, but to me part of XML's huge benefit is its
> human readability.  If you take formatting away it becomes simply a computer
> protocol not unlike many others.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing anyone
> here if libXML doesn't support it, but personally I'd love to see it as a
> feature.

  libxml2 will support indenting to the point of not destroying user's
data. If something is clearly of mixed content libxml2 will refuse to
indent it.
  And one really need to be an expert to come to the conclusion that
white spaces must be considered part of the data, people like James Clark
were not able in the 10 years of SGML to put on the table an algorithm
allowing to safely say whether a text node made of white space could be
considered formatting or not. As a result XML made that point very clear.
But users without that experience tends to only consider their own case
and feel satified with a decision which would screw the rest of the world.
  I hope we can close this issue.

Daniel

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