Re: [xsl] Control over html output

[Jeni Tennison <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mike,

> Yes, but the rules also say that when you use indent="yes", the
> processor must only add extra whitespace in places where it won't
> show in the browser. So if it makes a difference to what you see on
> the browser screen, something is wrong.

'Something', yes :) I think that rule is a bit vague: "how an HTML
user agent would render the output" could mean anything. I could have
some CSS that defines { white-space: pre } for all elements - is the
XSLT processor supposed to detect that and therefore not add white
space in text content throughout?

Generally, is an XSLT processor implementer supposed to go through
every HTML user agent (which doesn't necessarily mean browser - there
are other applications that retrieve and parse HTML for their own
nefarious purposes) and test whether the tabs and new lines they add
make a difference? Or does 'an HTML user agent' refer to a specific
one, with implementers free to choose which user agent they want to
work with?

I suppose that the most authoritative guidance you can hope to get
about how HTML should be rendered is to use the sample stylesheet for
HTML 4.0 from the CSS2 Rec. I can't see anything there that would
imply that the sample that Andy gave, which involved adding a line
break before a closing td element, should make a difference to the
rendering. So in this case I'd tend towards blaming a dodgy browser
(which ones caused problems, btw, Andy?) rather than the XSLT
processor.

Cheers,

Jeni

---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/



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