how to handle pre-formatted text

[David Schwartz]

I've got some pre-formatted text and I'm not sure how to encode it in
my xml to preserve its formatting. Any help would be appreciated!

TIA,
David

 

[Joseph J. Kesselman]

I've got some pre-formatted text and I'm not sure how to encode it in
my xml to preserve its formatting. Any help would be appreciated!

How is the formatting currently recorded?

If by "pre-formatted" you mean it contains spaces and tabs and
line-breaks -- that's no problem; basic XML considers all of that
meaningful content and will retain it. Individual XML applications may
discard some of this whitespace, perhaps based on schema and perhaps
based simply on their understanding of how that particular kind of XML
document should be interpreted... but that's a matter of how the XML is
used, not what it contains.

Exception: Whitespace and line breaks in attribute values will be
normalized. See the XML Recommendation for details.

If a particular tool doesn't retain information you need, it may not be
the right tool for your tasks, or you may not be using it right. To take
a specific example: XHTML, when displayed by a browser, will be
processed as HTML was and most whitespace will be discarded unless it is
in element specifically designed or marked to retain the existing
formatting. But that's the browser's behavior, and conventions of the
use of the XHTML markup, not XML.

If by "pre-formatted" you mean something else, please clarify.

 

[Peter Flynn]

I've got some pre-formatted text and I'm not sure how to encode it in
my xml to preserve its formatting. Any help would be appreciated!

It depends on the features provided by whatever schema/dtd you are using
(if any). Some (eg DocBook) provide markup specifically designed to
contain data that requires the preservation of linebreaks, for example.
Others (eg XHTML) provide a container (pre) but the recommendation about
how to handle it is in the spec, not the markup.

Without a schema/dtd, the only facility is a CDATA section within some
suitable element, but this is intended for the preservation of otherwise
parsable *markup* characters, not space-and-newline formatting, so you'd
need to specify or convey to anyone using it exactly what they should or
should not do with it.

///Peter

 

[Joseph J. Kesselman]

As far as XML is concerned, CDATA sections are just an alternative to
character-by-character escaping -- in other words, they're just syntax,
not semantics. They won't change how whitespace is interpreted, and they
may not even be visible to applications and/or may not be preserved
through stages of XML processing. So that approach isn't worth pursuing.

If you want to preserve whitespace, you need an element that your
particular application code doesn't process by discarding whitespace. As
I said, this is an application issue, not an XML issue per se... though
XML can provide some hints that the application may or not respect, such
as the xml:space attribute.

See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-white-space

 

[David Schwartz]

Thanks for the responses. The content is just some CSS style
definitions.

For some reason, pasting the formatted content into the tool I'm using
(Turbo XML) resulted in it being pretty messed up. Editing the content
in a normal text editor to ensure that everything's lined up properly
led to the desired result. Also, the changes seemed to be preserved
after going back into the xml editor.

FYI, I'm just placing content within the xml tag into <pre></pre> HTML
tags.

Thanks again for the input,
David

 

[Joseph J. Kesselman]

For some reason, pasting the formatted content into the tool I'm using
(Turbo XML) resulted in it being pretty messed up.

That sounds like a question of how cut and paste are working with your
tools -- how much non-text data the cut is capturing, and how good Turbo
XML is at figuring out how to discard it and just take the plaintext
view. Contact its authors and ask them...