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Re: [xsl] Initial whitespace in PI from XSLT, main body

2022-05-08 11:56:57
Maybe the solution here is to introduce a new house rule, namely
whitespace in PIs is never semantically significant,
at least without further specification of the PI or family of PIs, and
hence is fair game for reducing or rewriting.

This will violate the current rules, which eliminate only the leading
whitespace and leave intact any interim or even trailing whitespace.

Cheers,
Dimitre

On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 6:46 AM Wendell Piez wapiez(_at_)wendellpiez(_dot_)com <
xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:

Hey Syd and XSL-List,

"The client may not even notice that all of her PIs have lost a leading
space after her files are 'fixed' ..." indeed!

Maybe the solution here is to introduce a new house rule, namely
whitespace in PIs is never semantically significant, at least without
further specification of the PI or family of PIs, and hence is fair game
for reducing or rewriting.

From this point of view, normalization can be considered a feature not a
bug. The fact that the rule is not in the data model specs does not mean it
can't hang on your wall. It might be a good rule to have for other reasons
too. I am not proposing that everyone adopt it. (Maybe there are
counter use cases.) But it might be nice for you.

Cheers, Wendell

On Sun, May 8, 2022 at 3:59 AM Bauman, Syd 
s(_dot_)bauman(_at_)northeastern(_dot_)edu <
xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:

Thanks for the thoughts, Dimitre. Could also use some other character
(like ␠ (U+2420) or ␤ (U+2424)) and convert it later. But in fact I have no
need to force a whitespace character on output. If I don’t mention it, the
client may not even notice that all of her PIs have lost a leading space
after her files are “fixed” with my XSLT. But the spaces are summarily
unimportant. (Although it does make me wonder how they got there in the
first place. :-)

------------------------------
Syd, I see two ways (if you really need to) to maintain a PI whose string
value starts with a whitespace character:

  1. Enclose this value in some strippable non-whitespace characters (say
apostrophes or quotes), or,

  2. If the value is guaranteed not to end with a space character, just
use the reversed string value, and when you get that in your code, reverse
it back.

Hope this helps,

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-- 
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
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