Re: [htmltmpl] Whitespace (linefeed) suppression?

[Mark F. <mar...@ea...>]

From: "petersm" <pe...@ve...>
> Why should this matter (besides the bandwidth issue)? HTML ignores
whitespace
> and other than looking at the output of a template every now and then to
make
> sure that it is what you want, why do you care what the output looks like?

Why take bandwidth off the table? I gave an example (of a table) where the
whitespace could be significant. And, as has been mentioned, there are
occasions when the unintended whitespace *does* affect the final rendering.
In one prior discussion someone gave an example of the <image> element.
Keith just gave an example concerning email. (It may not have come out on
the list by the time you replied to me).

The question of why I would care what H::T output looks like is subjective.
Someone could suggest that I put all the H::T elements on one line and ask
"why do you care what the template looks like?" Authoring is subjective. I
just don't think I should get something out of H::T that I didn't intend. I
don't think the tags should influence the resulting whitespace. The tags are
eliminated, but whitespace associated with them is not. Is that really a
"problem?" To me, it's just a subjective issue that I'd like the resulting
HTML be closer to how I would author it if I hadn't used H::T tags. I'm
getting something in the output that I didn't specify.

> I like the fact that it does exactly what you tell it to do. If you have
> whitespace it puts it in your loop. If you don't have whitespace it won't.
> Fairly intuitive to me. Anyone?

My argument is that I *can't* tell it what to do. :) The only solution is to
remove the whitespace which will result in a very illegible template. Which
takes me back to my comparison to HTML authoring and how legibility (without
affecting the parser results) is provided for.

I guess my argument is that it's not *only* a matter of being intuitive
when/where to use whitespace. There are two kinds of whitespace. Maybe the
only questions are

1. Is it it is valid to consider there are two types of whitespace.
2. Should the use of H::T tags result in whitespace you wouldn't have if you
didn't use them?

Thanks!
Mark