Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Normalizing spaces?

["M. Wroth" <mark@astrid.upland.ca.us>]

In reply to my example of a non-DocBook example that behaves differently
than DocBook:

At 09:12 AM 5/9/01 -0400, Norman Walsh wrote:
> / "M. Wroth"
> <mark@astrid.upland.ca.us> was heard to say:
> | Here is an example of content:
> | 
> |           <p>It
> is not permissible under the Society's rules to
> |           fimbriate a
> chief. Laurel precedent (Laurel Alison, Dec 86
> |           and Aug 88)
> <q>however this is blazoned, in appearance it
> |           includes a
> fimbriated chief, which is not permitted for
> |           Society
> usage</q>. RFS VIII.3 limits fimbiration to simple
> |           geometric
> charges placed in the center of the field; while a
> |           chief is a
> simple geometric charge, it is not in the center
> |           of the
> field. </p>

[... I clip Norman's demonstration that spaces are preserved, for space
reasons ...]

Norman then asks

> So I'm still confused about what
> special processing you see being
> applied to spaces.

When I do the equivalent with DocBook and the Modular DSSSL style sheets,
spaces are not preserved, and I'm trying to figure out how that is
accomplished.

> Oh, wait a minute. Are you
> processing this with the JadeTeX backend!?
> *TeX* automatically converts multiple spaces into a single space.
> Could that be it?

No -- this is primarily (maybe exclusively) an RTF backend process (I
also process the various documents involved with the sgml backend, both
as a transformation step (in the case of the non-DocBook example) and to
get HTML output (in   both cases).  But the effect is
principally of interest in the RTF backend, as I'm trying to persuade
people that an SGML/XML approach is appropriate, and to integrate it into
the followon processing, RTF (or MS Word .doc) is desired.

Mark B. Wroth
<mark@astrid.upland.ca.us>