Re: Whitespace in EMPTY model

Tim Bray (tbray@textuality.com)
Tue, 20 Oct 1998 16:24:32 -0700

At 04:07 PM 10/20/98 -0400, Chris Maden wrote:
>I was ready to reply that an EMPTY element must have nothing between
>the start- and end-tags, but that's not immediately clear upon reading
>the spec.

You're right. You can have either <empty/> or <empty></empty> but
not
<empty>
</empty>

> 1. The declaration matches EMPTY and the element has no content.
>
>but it's not clear whether "no content" prohibits ignorable
>whitespace.

I think if you follow the definition chain it falls out. Content
includes text, and text is made of characters. There is NO SUCH
THING as ignorable whitespace in XML; the closest thing is
WS between elements where you have a declared element (i.e. non-mixed)
content. And that is not labeled "ignorable" or anything like it. -Tim