xml-dev - RE: tabs to indent for pretty-printing (is it correct?)

[David Valera <dvalera@pcl-hage.nl>]

>  > If I read the XML spec correctly, adding tabs and spaces
> to increase
>  > readability is often done, but it is not intended to be
> saved as such
>  > (significant whitespace excluded of course).
>
> That's application-specific; i.e. the parser passes all of the
> characters (including whitespace) to the application, then the
> application decides what is and isn't significant for its purposes.

This means that if I open an XML file with an (XML)editor, add an element
and save it back again, it is possible that not only the element I inserted
is added, but also the whitespaces that the application 'decides' to
include.

I am asking this because I have opened numerous XML files in XMLeditors and
without changing the content I was surprised to see all kinds of tabs and
spaces added to the saved document (just to make it easy readable).

This pretty-printing question is also one FAQ if you look at the xml
newsgroups...

David Valera