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Re: [xml-dev] What does it mean to lexically distinguish significantand insignificant whitespace?

It means that you can't tell from xml syntax as specified whether

<x><a>z</a><b>z</b></x>

means the same as

<x>
  <a>z</a>
  <b>z</b>
</x>

you could assume it's always significant (which would never allow you
to re-indent or otherwise re-format some xml)
but in practice you need external knowledge of the vocabulary.

in (x)html

<p><b>z</b><i>z</i></p>

is not the same as


<p>
  <b>z</b>
  <i>z</i>
</p>

but

<body><p>z</p><p>z</p></body>

is the same as

<body>
  <p>z</p>
  <p>z</p>
</body>

There is no syntactical (lexical) difference in the way white space
content of p and body are marked up in html: the significance or
otherwise of the space is specified in the processing of xhtml not in
the way it is parsed.

David


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