"Wolfgang Jeltsch" <jeltsch@t...> wrote in message 
news:2ukruvF2bv9jrU1@u......
> Hello,
>
> it is often convenient to insert whitespace into an XML document in order 
> to
> format it nicely.  For example, take this snippet of a notional DocBook 
> XML
> document:
>
>    <para>
>      This is a longer paragraph.
>      With <wordasword>longer</wordasword> I mean that it contains more 
> than
>      one sentence.
>    </para>
>
> I want the whitespace in this snippet of code to be handled as follows:
>
>    (1) The whitespace between "<para>" and "This" as well as the 
> whitespace
>        between "sentence." and "</para>" shall be discarded.
>
>    (2) Each other sequence of adjacent whitespace characters shall be
>        transformed into a single space character.
>
> But how do XML processors and applications deal with this issue?
>
> In section 2.10 of "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third Edition)",
> one can read:
>
>    In editing XML documents, it is often convenient to use "white
>    space" (spaces, tabs, and blank lines) to set apart the markup for
>    greater readability. Such white space is typically not intended for
>    inclusion in the delivered version of the document.
>
> But who decides which whitespace shall be considered as whitespace that is
> just used to set apart the markup?  And is whitespace just used to indent
> lines of text also not intended for inclusion in the delivered version?
> What is this "delivered version" of the document?
>
> I'd be thankful for any clarification.
>
my parser uses what could be called the "newline whitespace assertion", 
namely:
any initial whitespace is ignored;
any whitespace following a newline is eaten and replaced with a single space 
(unless it is the end of the text).


<foo>Hello  World
        Again</foo>

is parsed as:
<foo>Hello  World Again</foo>