Re: [xsl] Whitespace between nodes

[Nicholas Shanks <contact@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 13 May 2004, at 09:26, Michael Kay wrote:

> > Would you agree that, in this case, it should be:
> > <q>
> >   <a href="...">...</a>
> > </q>
>
> Assuming that the output method is HTML, the output should be
> <q><a href="...">...</a></q>
> whether or not indent="yes" has been set.

As I am outputting XHTML 1.1, my output method was set to xml - 
changing it to html gives:

Libxslt: all output serialised (no whitespace other than text nodes), 
same output as indent="no" (so looks fine in browser)
Saxon: works (<q><a/></q>), but indentation elsewhere follows my XSLT 
indentation not the HTML output
Xalan: still outputs <q> incorrectly (unchanged from output="xml")
Sablotron: same as Xalan

- I don't have MSXML or know anything about it.
Looking on msdn.microsoft.com/xml I could only find Windows versions to 
download.

> However, as far as I can see the responses to the original question 
> have
> been very confused. I don't think it has been clearly established 
> whether
> the unwanted whitespace came (a) from whitespace-only text nodes in the
> source (in which case it should be removed using xsl:strip-space), (b) 
> from
> significant whitespace in the source (in which case it should be 
> removed
> using normalize-space()), or (c) as a result of output indentation. The
> remedies in the three cases are quite different.

By 'source' do you mean the XML or the XSLT file?
There is no white-space in the XML href attribute, nor is there any 
between <q> and </q> in the XSL, therefore (c) is the relevant one, 
yes?
I thought xsl:strip-space and normalise-space() only affected text 
nodes like "   hello ", thus neither were pertinent to my query. But 
other respondents to my question suggest that I have misunderstood 
these.

I tried adding <xsl:strip-space elements="q"> to my XSLT in both xml 
and html output modes and all four processors were unaffected in their 
output in either mode. This is in line with what I had originally 
thought strip-space did.


On 13 May 2004, at 01:50, M. David Peterson wrote:

> So yes, there is a tag (and function) that do what you need but theyre
> not really magic.
>
> Im telling you these things because as I read through your email thread
> I was seeing a lot of frustration and contention with those trying to
> help.

I must apologise if my emails came across badly. This was unintended, 
and I blame it entirely on lack of sleep :-)

> And a quick trip to Michaels Kay's reference...

Where can I find this?

> or Dave Pawson's FAQ would have presented a dozen examples using an 
> element and function that
> pretty much state in plain English just what it is they do.

I had read through the FAQ but nothing I saw seemed to do what I wanted.
Nor did any of my programmer-friends know. That was why I resorted to 
emailing this list.
I did try to search for a solution prior, honest govn'r!
Mailing lists tend to be very slow but very authoritative ways of 
finding out information, since those who can answer a question are 
often the top experts on the matter, but are often very busy too!

> I've found that when there feels like there should be a simple solution
> there usually is and it just takes a bit of research to find the 
> answer.
> And if after doing the research you still cant find the answer your
> going to find a lot of people in here who will help you with exactly 
> the
> things you need but who will also avoid you if they feel like your not
> doing anything to research it yourself and your getting frustrated with
> people because theyre not giving you exactly what you want when you 
> want
> it.

Again, apologies - it was not frustration at the respondents not giving 
me what I wanted, but that after a few replies came in I realised my 
question had been misunderstood, primarily because of lack of detail on 
my part (sorry!). So I responded to fill in the gaps and explain the 
question better.

- Nick.