[oXygen-user] Xpath and Saxon return tabs as text

Tue Sep 9 09:12:36 CDT 2008

Hi,

In the meantime, Philip should be aware that 
there is generally only a loose binding between a 
schema (or DTD) and a document, such that (other 
things being equal) processors will not 
automatically strip whitespace-only text nodes 
from documents without explicit instruction to do 
so. This is by design, since schemas are not 
always available to processors, and indeed some 
operations can and should be able to run without 
schemas. Whitespace stripping without a schema is 
dangerous and can frequently result in corrupt 
data where whitespace was stripped improperly.

Accordingly, although the XPath 2.0/XQuery family 
of technologies provides this feature, Philip may 
have to get used to its not always being 
available, for example when using XPath 1.0.

In general, it's something to watch out for; 
automatic whitespace stripping can easily fall 
into the category of "be careful what you wish for".

Cheers,
Wendell

At 11:23 AM 9/3/2008, Sorin wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Saxon 9 has an option for stripping whitespace 
>nodes but Oxygen allows you to set it only for 
>transformations (Preferences -> XML -> 
>XSLT-FO-XQuery -> XSLT -> Saxon -> Saxon-B/SA). 
>If you set the above option to strip whitespace 
>nodes and you run an XSLT transform that uses 
>the expression //text() you can see that the 
>list of nodes does not contain such nodes. In 
>the next version we will add this Saxon 9 option for XPath expressions too.

...

>Philipp SteinkrÃ¼ger wrote:
>>Dear Oxygen-Users,
>>i am having a problem with an indented XML File. The File looks like this:
>><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>><TEI 
>>xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
>>xmlns="http://www.i-d-e.de/ns/1.0">
>>     <teiHeader>
>>         <fileDesc>
>>             <titleStmt>
>>                 <title>MS Einsiedeln</title>
>>             </titleStmt>
>>             <publicationStmt>
>>                 <p>publicationsStmt empty</p>
>>             </publicationStmt><sourceDesc>
>>                 <p>sourceDesc empty</p>
>>             </sourceDesc></fileDesc>
>>     </teiHeader>
>>     <text>
>>         <body>
>>             <div>
>>                 <div>
>>                     <div>
>>                         <p><c>D</c>ie gotheit 
>> iƒt beƒloƒÅ¿ƒen<lb/>in dem vater n<ex>atur</ex>elich
>>                                 dar<lb/>vmbe 
>> iƒt er alvermvgende<lb/>vnd enpfat niht von ite<lb
>>                                 />des<gap 
>> reason=""/> er ƒelber nit en iƒt an<lb/>ƒiner go<unclear
> >                                 >tl</unclear>icher macht wan<lb/>ers
>>weƒelich i<ex>n</ex> ime vnd
>>                                 an<lb/>ime 
>> ƒelben beƒloƒÅ¿ƒen hat<space unit="letters" quantity="1"
>>                         /></p>
>>    </div>
>>      </div>
>>        </div>
>>     </body>
>>   </text>
>></TEI>
>>Now, using the following XPath 2.0 expression: 
>>//text(), the tabs are returned as text-nodes, 
>>for example the first tab before the tag 
>><teiHeader>. In fact, my DTD does not allow 
>>#PCDATA inside <TEI>, but the document is 
>>validated without any problems. To me this 
>>seems kind of schizophrenic, or am I mistaken? 
>>Btw: the same file in XMLSpy with its build-in 
>>xslt engine as well as MS XML parser with the 
>>same xPath expression does not return the tabs as text-nodes.
>>Any ideas?
>>Philipp
>>PS: I am using Oxygen 9.3

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