Using an entity for block of XML destroys my pretty printing layout

[menkalos]

I know you can use an entity to represent both inline text and an entire block of XML tags.

When I use an entity to represent a large block of XML, and the do the CTRL-SHIFT-P to "pretty print" the XML, the entity is treated as an "inline" thing and (even if what comes before it and after it are their own blocks) gets the white space before and after it removed. This makes it very hard to read by burying what could be a very important element in the middle of a line and messing up the formatting of what came before and after as well.

I'd love to know of a way to address this, and if there is not yet one, to encourage the devs to address this somehow.

Thanks much!!!

[Radu]

Hi,

Thanks for the report, I added an internal issue for it: "EXM-46792 - Treat entity reference in element only content as an element".
If we make any progress on this in a future release I will update this forum post.

Regards,
Radu

[Mircea]

Hello,

Thank you for reporting this issue.
The fix was included in the new 23.1 version that was rele4ased few days ago.

Regards,
Mircea.

[menkalos]

No, I don't think it is. I just upgraded to 23.1, and entered this:

Code: Select all

    <documentation target="operation-name$parameter">
         &some-entity; 
    </documentation>

where &some-entity; is an entity with a <para>...</para> as the outermost tags. However, when I press CTRL-SHIFT-P to "pretty print", it still all gets sucked into a single line:

Code: Select all

    <documentation target="operation-name$parameter"> &some-entity; </documentation>

I want my block tag spacing with line breaks to be respected by pretty-print. Stop destroying the white space, please!

If I missed a setting that must be enabled to turn on the "fix", please let me know! Thank you!

[Mircea]

Hello,

Thank you for the feedback!

We implemented this suport for elements only content, as specified by the schema of the document. We cannot detect what is the content of the entity when formatting the document.
Having this in mind we decided that putting entities on a different line is acceptable for elements only content.
For mixed content or text only content elements the entity is treated as a regular text.

Regards,
Mircea.