Re: [Htmlparser-developer] Method to check if TextNode is just whitespace

[Ian M. <ian...@gm...>]

> Conversion of character references like   is already performed by th=
e util.Translate class.
Oh good! No need for me to write it then :)

> There is no &tab; character reference as far as I'm aware
You're right, I just guessed a whitespace entity name, typed it into
Google and found references to it. Sorry, I ought to have checked it
out a bit better first.

Derrick, for a isWhiteSpace() method, what do you think it ought to do
when the String is null?

Ian

On 11/3/05, Derrick Oswald <Der...@ro...> wrote:
> Conversion of character references like &nbsp; is already performed by
> the util.Translate class.
> There is no &tab; character reference as far as I'm aware (see
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html).
>
> Ian Macfarlane wrote:
>
> >Thanks for your reply,
> >
> >I wasn't suggesting trimming the actual text of the text nodes
> >permanently, merely wondering if using the trim() method to see if the
> >resulting string was empty would be sufficient, or whether we should
> >also look for various white-space HTML entities (e.g. &tab; also) for
> >purposes of determining this.
> >
> >Now I think about it some more, white space alone is probably what we
> >want to do. If we want to get things like &tab; we ought to write some
> >sort of method that would replace those types of HTML character
> >references with the actual characters, if that's feasible.
> >
> >The only other question I've got - what do you all think should happen
> >if the contents of the text node is null? Should it return true
> >(because there's no characters), false (because it's not actually a
> >white space String) or throw a NullPointerException (which would
> >negate the value of this method by forcing the end-user to write lots
> >of code to use this method)? Can a text node ever be null without the
> >user changing the text ot be null?
> >
> >Ian
> >
> >String is immutable so String.trim().equals("") won't change the
> >original String object.
> >
> >On 11/2/05, Axel <ax...@gm...> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On 11/1/05, Ian Macfarlane <ian...@gm...> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I was thinking it might be worthwhile adding a method to Text/TextNode
> >>>along the lines of:
> >>>
> >>>boolean isWhiteSpace()
> >>>
> >>>Which would return if the TextNode consisted of solely white space
> >>>characters (or was the empty String).
> >>>
> >>>Now this could simply be done using String.trim().equals(""), however
> >>>that wouldn't account for:
> >>>
> >>>- the non-breaking space character (#160)
> >>>- The HTML code &nbsp; (also &nbsp as Firefox/IE do)
> >>>- The HTML code &#160; (also &#160 as Firefox/IE do)
> >>>
> >>>So my question is, do you think should this method should treat those
> >>>as spaces and remove/ignore them also for purposes of determining if
> >>>the TextNode is white space? Or should it only trim normal whitespace
> >>>(space, tab, carriage returns, etc).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I think, if every character (or entity converted to a
> >>unicode-character) in the TextNode is true for
> >>Character#isWhitespace() the boolean isWhiteSpace() should return
> >>true;
> >>IMO the TextNode shouldn't be trimmed automatically. Only a special
> >>function should allow this to do.
> >>
> >>--
> >>Axel Kramer
> >>http://www.plog4u.org - Wikipedia Eclipse Plugin
> >>
> >>
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