Re: [xml-dev] Text editor mirage
On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 6:04 PM Roger L Costello <[email protected]> wrote:
[Definition] Mirage: something that appears real or possible but is not in fact so.
Hi Folks,
Recently I used a text editor to open an XML document. Here’s what I saw:
<Document>
<Greeting>Hello, world</Greeting>
</Document>
That is, at the top of the screen I saw:
<Document>
About a centimeter below I saw:
<Greeting>Hello, world</Greeting>
And a centimeter below that I saw:
</Document>
It is a mirage.
There is no vertical dimension in the XML. The XML is just a linear list of symbols:
<Document>NL <Greeting>Hello, world</Greeting>NL</Document>
The invisible characters I denote by NL.
The mirage effect that, you've cited is due to the fundamental difference between physical XML characters and the UI editor rendering software. Within an XML document, a newline or an end-of-line character are physical characters (bytes).The UI editor rendering software, displays (i.e, appears to the eyes) the newline/end-of-line characters as invisible (i.e whitespaces).
What is physically, a software characteristic, you call a mirage :)
Regards,
Mukul Gandhi