Re: Re: [xsl] outputing tags

[Sam Carleton <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 11:34:09AM -0500, cknell@xxxxxxxxxx
wrote:
> It wasn't clear if you have all the answers you need, but in
> case you still need a solution to:
> 
> "Ok, then how do I do this:  I have my xml file with all the
> info I need in it.  There is one element named <quote> which
> contains quotes.  Some quotes need to have line break (
> <br>'s in HTML).  How do I denote a line break in the XML
> and then how do I transform it?"
> 
> the answer is that XML doesn't have a special element to
> denote a line break. XSLT will happily copy any new lines
> you put in your source document or ones that you introduce
> in the templates, but that can be confusing (people often
> get line breaks where they weren't expecting them because of
> this; see references to  <xsl:strip-space>,
> <xsl:preserve-space> and the normalize-space() function).
> 
> Since an element like "<br />" has no "meaning" in XML, and
> because it is a perfectly well-formed element, you can put
> them directly into your source document and they will be
> copied into the result tree (and eventually serialized to
> your browser where "<br />" actually does have a meaning).
> Or you could introduce it in the XSLT at the appropriate
> points.

Charles,

I guess I phrased my Q the wrong way.  I am aware of the fact
that the tags in XML have no specia meaning.  But like any
other programming language there seems to be right and wrong
ways of doing things.  

I am curious to know how others handle a situation I discribed
above.  I believe that I am going to run into this problem in
many places and would like to know the best solution.  Or at
least the auther of the replies best solution.

I do NOT feel that relying on the tradition linebreak is a
good idea.  I figured the best thing to do is denote a line
break in my XML the same way HTML denotes a line break.
Espically considering the target output is HTML.

Sam

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