Martin Wheeler wrote:
>> Why not just use <para>Some text here.</para>?
>
>
> Probably for the same reason that you don't use:
> <para>Some text here.</para><para>Some more text here.</para><para>Yet
> more text here.</para><para>Still further text here.</para>
These two examples are completely different. Element para has mixed
content -- it can contain both text and nested elements (links, phrase
markup, etc.) on the same level. In mixed content you must preserve all
whitespace and thus it is not safe to use whitespace to pretty-print
your XML source. So writing
<para>
Some text here.
</para>
is always bad, because you have space before first word "Some". You will
not notice this space in most output formats, because processing rules
of HTML and XSL-FO discrad this sort of spaces. But this is not general
rule and some tools will show this space -- try DSSSL stylesheets and
RTF output. You will get very ugly output.
OTOH it is your choice whether you write:
<para>Some text here.</para><para>Some other text here.</para>
or
<para>Some text here.</para>
<para>Some other text here.</para>
or even
<para>Some text here.</para>
<para>Some other text here.</para>
It is because parent (typically section or chapter) of element para
doesn't have mixed content, it can directly contain only other elements.
In this case processing tools know that whitespace between para elements
is insignificant and can be safely discarded.
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Jirka Kosek e-mail: http://www.kosek.cz
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