Re: Formatting_the_result (in The DSSSList Digest V3 #186)

Subject: Re: Formatting_the_result (in The DSSSList Digest V3 #186)
From: MARK.WROTH@xxxxxxxxxxx (Wroth, Mark)
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 10:47:56 -0700
G. Ken Holman wrote (in response to Ron Ross and Brandon Ibach's suggestion
to give OpenJade users the option of having the processor not put newlines
into tags) 

<quote>
I would *only* support such an option if it was made painful to use and if
it were made obvious to a user about the impact on their data and then I
would only support it under protest as I think it will be misleading for
people.

Regardless of the fact that people read markup, the computers that read the
markup need to get the correct information.  Why make it look nice in an
editor if it risks modifying the information?

Those who arbitrarily take the output from JADE and "reflow" the markup may
be manually introducing data content that wasn't there in the first place.

I agree this is a lesser-understood area of the standard, but it is
critically important from a data processing perspective.

I hope this is considered supportive to the discussion.
</quote>

I have three comments in response to this as an interested user:

	- Don't make options "painful to use".  I have no problem with
warnings and such to make sure the user understands the dangers of the
option.  But once I've decided to accept those risks ....

	- The substantive issue confuses me.  How can an option which _does
not_ introduce newlines change the data content of the document?  If the
concern is that the author/editor may change the data content after loading
into an editor ... well, I can live with that; changing the content is why I
loaded it into an editor in the first place.

	- Finally, and just speaking for myself, I would mildly like the
three options of 1) the current insertion of line breaking; 2) insert
nothing, and 3)insert line breaks and indentation to show the structure of
the document (recognizing that in some documents this potentially changes
the document).  I'd make the default one of the first two, though.

(P.S. my apologies for the style of quotation --- this mailer and I don't
see eye to eye on the subject....)


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