Re: XML and empty line (DocBook)

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 05:22 PM 8/3/2002 +0200, Simon Pepping wrote:

>Perhaps it is better not to require that an XML parser in TeX can do
>all these features right. It must be possible to rewrite the XML file
>as a 'normalized' file and submit that to the TeX parser. For example,
>it is possible to write a ContentHandler for a validating SAX parser
>that removes ignorable white space. Perhaps the same is possible with
>an XSLT script, but I am not sure if any XSLT processor does a
>validating parse. Such a procedure would get rid of ignorable white
>space, and it would resolve entities, thus making the work of a TeX
>parser much easier.

indeed, in some cases preprocessing is handy, for instance, i sometimes 
convert the 'verbatim cdata' things into code like:

<verbatim>
<line>...</line>

thereby not only gaining much more control over typography, but also 
getting cleaner source code.

I will provide some more cleanup, and esp when we have to deal with 
language specific typesetting, it makes sense to convert all non chars into 
entities (: => &colon; and alike, because this permits language dependent 
spacing). Some of our current project sdemands this kind of control, so you 
can expect some tools

Hans
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