From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2002-05-16T05:20:13+09:00
Subject: Re: ANN: REXML 2.3.3


Sean Russell wrote:

> Sean O'Dell wrote:
> 
>>Dossy has a point, although pretty printing XML is problematic in
>>itself.  If there are sub-keys, it's often assumed the parent key
>>doesn't have data so the whitespace doesn't matter.  Most pretty
>>printing I've seen ignores extra parent whitespace and just makes sure
>>the keys with data and no sub-keys is tight.
>>
> 
> Right.  We'll get nice pretty printing; I haven't worked on it much, but it 
> should be improved.  I'm working with Dossy right now on narrowing down 
> what he expects from pretty printing, then I'll submit it and see what 
> people think.  That's why we have a development branch of REXML :-)
> 
> However, I too have a point.  Any time you insert whitespace to do pretty 
> printing, you're changing the document.  Pretty printing is not a 
> transitive operation, for "correct" XML processors, because (according to 
> the XML spec) the processor must always report all whitespace to the 
> application.


Hmm...I'm thinking of how maybe the two could be mixed...hmm.

I wonder if maybe you could check for a particular attribute of an 
element.  Maybe raw="true"|"false."  If true, just print the data 
"as-is" from there on out; indent the starting and ending elements and 
give the ending element its usual newline, but within the start/end tags 
just output it normally.

	Sean