Structured Frame saving XML

[Trevor Nicholls]

Well... suppose we have a source code fragment following this kind of model:

<code>label {
     word        (parameter)
     long-word   (parameter,   parameter)
}</code>

where the 'code' element has the #FIXED attributes 'formatted="yes"' and
'xml:space="preserve"' in the DTD.

We want to preserve the line breaks and internal spacing of this element.
This was sufficient to achieve this when we were using 100% XML tools like
Saxon and libxml. Evidently not for Frame. The first change I made was to
introduce a <nl> element into the DTD which our presentation process
recognizes as a marker for a newline, thus the above would be written in our
initial XML file as:

<code>label {<nl />
     word        (parameter)<nl />
     long-word   (parameter,   parameter)<nl />
}</code>

The first problem is that if Frame's line breaking is so minded, the
internal spacing of this element will be subverted. That's because the line
breaking seems unconcerned about the number of following/preceding spaces.

The second problem is that when I try and recover the spacing within
Framemaker, even though the 'code' element is formatted in a fixed width
font as per the EDD rules, the alignment is neither roundtrippable nor (hard
to believe) is it even predictable at the character level (by which I mean
that words shift by extra fractions of a space as characters are inserted or
deleted).

Does this make sense?

Cheers
Trevor


-----Original Message-----
From: Combs, Richard [mailto:richard.combs at Polycom.com] 
Sent: Saturday, 3 March 2007 4:28 a.m.
To: trevor at castingthevoid.com; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Structured Frame saving XML

Trevor Nicholls wrote:
 
> Our source documents are in XML and we edit in structured 
> Frame. I have XSL processes running successfully on Open and 
> Save and I have no issues with the validity of the XML which 
> Frame is giving me. However I do have an issue with the 
> layout. Because our XML files are managed by a source control 
> system, I would like to minimize the differences between 
> revisions, and Frame's apparent perversity regarding 
> line-wrapping in particular is making this difficult.

Well, I'm just a dumb unstructured author, but I thought the whole point
of XML, SGML, etc., was to separate content from presentation. If line
wrapping isn't presentation, I don't know what is. 

Maybe I'm confused and don't understand your question. But what does the
line wrapping (or other page layout matters) have to do with the XML
file that you're source-controlling? 

Richard


------
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------