xml:space in document vs in element definitions

Question

I'm testing XML/XHTML import in FrameMaker 2015.

If I use xml:space in my document, then FM2015 recognizes this and uses the correct spacing (a big improvement over the old version I've been using!).

But if I set my element definitions to automatically add an xml:space attribute, the white space is not preserved. I can tell that my definitions are getting applied because it applies the correct styles, and when I look in Structure View, I can see that xml:space is indeed set to preserve... but the spaces aren't correct.

Is there any way I can get FrameMaker to automatically recognize certain types of elements and preserve the whitespace, or do I need to explicitly set xml:preserve every single time I want to preserve spacing?

Lynne A. Price · Accepted Answer

Then maybe the problem is the XHTML custom client... I'll investigate more tomorrow, thanks.

The client source code is provided. Glancing through its comments, it seems to concentrate on converting links, table properties, and graphic properties from FM's default XML representation to XHTML. You may want at least some of it. Much of it could be done with XSLT instead of the FDK.

--Lynne

Lynne A. Price · Answer

bbbbbbbberg,

What do you mean by "if I set my element definitions to automatically add an xml:space attribute, the white space is not preserved."? Do you mean element definitions in your EDD, or element declarations in a DTD? And what do you mean by automatically adding an xml:space attribute? Specifying a default value?

I haven't tested all the combinations, but I'm pretty sure that FM uses the value of xml:space in an XML document to determine how to interpret white space wile it is importing the XML document into FM. It uses the value of xml:space within FM only to be able to write it back out when you save the document as XML. Thus, if your XML document does not have an xml:space attribute but your EDD defines one with a default value of "preserve", once an element is imported into FM, it will have the attribute (with no value specified), but the default value will not affect the way whitespace is treated during import.

On the other hand, if you are using a DTD, and the DTD includes declarations such as

<!ATTLIST x xml:space (default| preserve) "preserve">

then the attribute value is available while the document is being imported and all <x> elements will import with preserved whitespace.

Are you using xml:space because you want to use it with XML tools other than FM? Or are you just trying to get content with significant spaces into FM?

--Lynne

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