Re: [xml-dev] Text editor mirage

[Mukul Gandhi <mukulg@softwarebytes.org>]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 6:04 PM Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> wrote:

[Definition] Mirage: something that appears real or possible but is not in fact so.

Hi Folks,

Recently I used a text editor to open an XML document. Here’s what I saw:

<Document>

    <Greeting>Hello, world</Greeting>

</Document>

That is, at the top of the screen I saw:

<Document>

About a centimeter below I saw:

    <Greeting>Hello, world</Greeting>

And a centimeter below that I saw:

</Document>

It is a mirage.

There is no vertical dimension in the XML. The XML is just a linear list of symbols:

<Document>NL    <Greeting>Hello, world</Greeting>NL</Document>

The invisible characters I denote by NL.

The mirage effect that, you've cited is due to the fundamental difference between physical XML characters and the UI editor rendering software. Within an XML document, a newline or an end-of-line character are physical characters (bytes).The UI editor rendering software, displays (i.e, appears to the eyes) the newline/end-of-line characters as invisible (i.e whitespaces).

 

What is physically, a software characteristic, you call a mirage :)

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Regards,

Mukul Gandhi