On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 22:55:03 -0800 (PST), Mukul Gandhi
<mukul_gandhi(_at_)yahoo(_dot_)com> wrote:
Hi Ken,
I tested white space handling by Saxon 8.1.1(in XSLT
1.0 mode) , Xalan-J 2.6.0 & MSXML4. I took the XML
example provided by Dare Obasanjo in xml-dev post, and
the XPath expression he posted..
The XML is -
<pre>
<b>bold</b>
<i>italic</i>
</pre>
The XPath expression is -
count(/pre/child::node())
Saxon gives result - 5
MSXML4 gives result - 2
Xalan-J 2.6.0 gives result - 5
The XSLT 1.0 spec(URL -
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xslt-19991116) says
(section 3.4 Whitespace Stripping)
"After the tree for a source document or stylesheet
document has been constructed, but before it is
otherwise processed by XSLT, some text nodes *are*
stripped.
A text node *is preserved if any of the following
apply*:
1) The element name of the parent of the text node is
in the set of whitespace-preserving element names.
2) The text node contains at least one non-whitespace
character. As in XML, a whitespace character is #x20,
#x9, #xD or #xA.
3) An ancestor element of the text node has an
xml:space attribute with a value of preserve, and no
closer ancestor element has xml:space with a value of
default.
Otherwise, the text node *is* stripped. "
There seems no ambiguity, that in this example
(provided by Dare Obasanjo) - white spaces *must* be
stripped (as none of the above 3 conditions in spec
are holding true).
It seems to me, MSXML4 is compliant in this regard. I
fear, Saxon and Xalan are not compliant..
Also, I feel what the spec recommends in this
regard(white space stripping) is correct..
Unless the user explicitly gives instruction to
preserve white spaces, they should be stripped. *White
space only, text nodes* are of no use for application.
Regards,
Mukul
It's better not only to "feel", but also to read well.
The spec also says just a few lines further:
"Initially , the set of whitespace-preserving element names contains
all element names."
This, combined with rule 1) means that your conclusion is contrary to
the rules established by the XSLT 1.0 spec.
BTW, the exact link to the discussed rules is:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xslt-19991116#strip
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev.
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