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Posted to fop-users@xmlgraphics.apache.org by Maria2009 <ma...@shinoto.de> on 2009/03/24 12:02:48 UTC
Normalizing space and special spaces
Hello,
I am not sure whether this is the best place to present my question or
suggestion, so please feel free to tell me if it is not:
In my xml-documents (unstructured text) I have nested elements which result
in nice PDFs, where the text flow is always correctly separated by single
spaces thanks to whitespace normalization.
Now, for some of these nested elements I have to create special whitespace
(like non-breaking small spaces), so I do not need the whitespace from the
normalization. In other words: Instead of "text_text-from-element_text"
(with _ for normal spaces between the elements), I want
"text*text-from-element_text" (with * for non breaking whitespaces) but get
"text_*text-from-element_text".
In the beginning I thought of "cleaning up" the FO-document after a first
transformation from XML to FO, but on the other hand I think that it is
anyway unlogical to normalize whitepace but exclude the typographical
whitespaces (or spaces) when creating a document for print.
So I suggest to integrate a feature in the FOP to clean up double spaces
that come into being because for typography one needs to work with several
space characters.
May be the FO to PDF stage is not the right place?
Best and thanks like always,
Maria
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Chris Bowditch <bo...@hotmail.com>.
Maria2009 wrote:
<snip/>
>
> So I suggest to integrate a feature in the FOP to clean up double spaces
> that come into being because for typography one needs to work with several
> space characters.
XSL-FO has this feature already: white-space-collapse. By default this
is set to true, so 2 spaces together will be collapsed to a single
space. So I'm not sure what is going wrong in your case.
>
> May be the FO to PDF stage is not the right place?
Regards,
Chris
>
> Best and thanks like always,
> Maria
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Re: AW: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Maria2009 <ma...@shinoto.de>.
Georg,
great question, I only thought from my very limited experiences. Let me
suggest a logical hierarchy for survival:
A typographical space is always included with intention, so I would delete
the normal space at first.
A zero-width space is not really a whitespace, I would not include this into
the collaps-rule.
Non-breaking spaces have a reason to be, they should not be deleted. If two
non-breaking spaces of the same or different width accidently follow each
other (I can hardly imagine a situation when this happens, but things
sometimes do happen), I would suggest to give the only one, and always the
smallest one the highest chance for survival.
So in your example the non-breaking-space would survive.
- Did I forget any case (it is late here in Japan)?
- Do you think it is basically OK to think of such an option in the stage of
rendering the page with FOP from the FO-document?
Cheers,
Maria
Georg Datterl wrote:
>
> Hi Maria,
>
> If there's a sequence of <normal
> space><non-breaking-space><zero-width-space>, which one would survive?
>
> Regards,
>
> Georg Datterl
>
> ------ Kontakt ------
>
> Georg Datterl
>
> Geneon media solutions gmbh
> Gutenstetter Straße 8a
> 90449 Nürnberg
>
> ...
>
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Maria2009 <ma...@shinoto.de>.
Hi,
just to report the solution:
"normalize-space" does not trim space inside elements, only between
elements, so it did not work. But it is possible to count the text nodes in
elements with mixed content:
"(text())[1]"
e.g. for the first node in mixed content. Then it is easy to manipulate the
last or first characters in the nodes according to the elements following.
Thanks for all ideas,
Maria
Maria2009 wrote:
>
> Hi Andreas,
>
> Thanks again. I tried this earlier, but the outcome was not what I
> envisaged (it varied, but that may be due to some other uncertainties at
> that stage...). So I will try this route again, and when I found a
> solution, will report.
>
> I appreciate your help, particular since this was not really a FO question
> ;).
>
> Cheers,
> Maria
>
>
>
> Andreas Delmelle-2 wrote:
>>
>> On 26 Mar 2009, at 02:07, Maria2009 wrote:
>>
>> Hi Maria
>>
>>> <snip />
>>> If anybody has a hint of how to get create a unified original
>>> document from
>>> these different options, I will be happy. I thought of adressing these
>>> points (spaces before and after element tags) with XPointer or
>>> RegEx, so if
>>> there is an advice about which one to use, I will start learning this
>>> technique at first. Or anything else if necessary!
>>
>> Just an idea, but the first thing to try:
>> If the value comes with a trailing space from the source XML, then
>> using something like
>>
>> <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)" />
>>
>> should remove leading/trailing spaces, and output only the significant
>> content of the descendant text-node. For white-space-only nodes, the
>> above will yield a zero-length string.
>>
>> If you have no parts in the source XML where white-space/linefeeds
>> should be preserved, you could even use the above as the default
>> matching template for 'text()'. That is likely to be the most
>> straightforward solution to your issue. No pre-processing of the FO
>> needed, I think...
>>
>>
>> HTH!
>>
>> Andreas
>>
>> ...
>>
>
>
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Maria2009 <ma...@shinoto.de>.
Hi Andreas,
Thanks again. I tried this earlier, but the outcome was not what I envisaged
(it varied, but that may be due to some other uncertainties at that
stage...). So I will try this route again, and when I found a solution, will
report.
I appreciate your help, particular since this was not really a FO question
;).
Cheers,
Maria
Andreas Delmelle-2 wrote:
>
> On 26 Mar 2009, at 02:07, Maria2009 wrote:
>
> Hi Maria
>
>> <snip />
>> If anybody has a hint of how to get create a unified original
>> document from
>> these different options, I will be happy. I thought of adressing these
>> points (spaces before and after element tags) with XPointer or
>> RegEx, so if
>> there is an advice about which one to use, I will start learning this
>> technique at first. Or anything else if necessary!
>
> Just an idea, but the first thing to try:
> If the value comes with a trailing space from the source XML, then
> using something like
>
> <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)" />
>
> should remove leading/trailing spaces, and output only the significant
> content of the descendant text-node. For white-space-only nodes, the
> above will yield a zero-length string.
>
> If you have no parts in the source XML where white-space/linefeeds
> should be preserved, you could even use the above as the default
> matching template for 'text()'. That is likely to be the most
> straightforward solution to your issue. No pre-processing of the FO
> needed, I think...
>
>
> HTH!
>
> Andreas
>
> ...
>
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Andreas Delmelle <an...@telenet.be>.
On 26 Mar 2009, at 02:07, Maria2009 wrote:
Hi Maria
> <snip />
> If anybody has a hint of how to get create a unified original
> document from
> these different options, I will be happy. I thought of adressing these
> points (spaces before and after element tags) with XPointer or
> RegEx, so if
> there is an advice about which one to use, I will start learning this
> technique at first. Or anything else if necessary!
Just an idea, but the first thing to try:
If the value comes with a trailing space from the source XML, then
using something like
<xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)" />
should remove leading/trailing spaces, and output only the significant
content of the descendant text-node. For white-space-only nodes, the
above will yield a zero-length string.
If you have no parts in the source XML where white-space/linefeeds
should be preserved, you could even use the above as the default
matching template for 'text()'. That is likely to be the most
straightforward solution to your issue. No pre-processing of the FO
needed, I think...
HTH!
Andreas
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Maria2009 <ma...@shinoto.de>.
Hi Andreas,
I had not success yesterday as well. I thought I should search more
intensively on Sunday, but since you made the same experience though knowing
better where to search, I think I will forget about this idea for a while.
Andreas Delmelle-2 wrote:
>
> ...
>
> Some follow-up on this:
> Hope you have better luck than I did. I could have sworn I had read
> something like that... :-/
>
> Maybe I'm mixing up things, and the reference I remember is not
> Unicode at all.
>
> ...
>
> At any rate, my original intention was not so much to 'correct' as to
> 'inform'. XSL-FO mentions absolutely nothing about non-XML white-space
> characters. The only references to be found are to the four codepoints
> I mentioned earlier. As far as XSL-FO is concerned, a zero-width space
> is just another character.
> On the other hand, things like Unicode line-separators or paragraph-
> breaks aren't spoken about either, but FOP does deal with them as an
> end-user would expect.
>
These informations are highly appreciated!
Andreas Delmelle-2 wrote:
>
>
> In the meantime, I have re-read your original post, and:
>
>> Now, for some of these nested elements I have to create special
>> whitespace
>> (like non-breaking small spaces), so I do not need the whitespace
>> from the
>> normalization. In other words: Instead of "text_text-from-
>> element_text"
>> (with _ for normal spaces between the elements), I want
>> "text*text-from-element_text" (with * for non breaking whitespaces)
>> but get
>> "text_*text-from-element_text".
>
> What does the generated FO look like *exactly*? If there is any
> indentation or a linefeed, one regular space-character will always
> survive default settings for "white-space-collapse", "white-space-
> treatment" and "linefeed-treatment".
> You could experiment by setting the property 'linefeed-
> treatment="ignore"' on the surrounding block. If that relieves the
> issue, then it means that an unnecessary linefeed is present in the
> FO. For example the FO looks like (literally):
>
> <fo:block>
> text
> <fo:inline>*text-from-element</fo:inline>
> ...
>
> The white-space between the word 'text' and the fo:inline would yield
> one space that survives, since from the point-of-view of the processor
> (FOP) it just appears in between two characters.
>
> If you were to make that:
>
> <fo:block>text<fo:inline>*text-from-element</fo:inline>
> ...
>
> then the output would be precisely what you seem to expect. Could be
> that this particular issue is solvable by adhering to best practices
> and simply producing processor-friendly (as opposed to human-readable)
> XML.
>
> In other words: make sure the FO result does not contain ANY white-
> space that you don't want there, and FOP will behave. It treats
> regular spaces as XSL-FO prescribes, and for the rest, it only assumes
> that every other type of space is there because it was intended.
>
>
> HTH!
>
> Andreas
>
>
It helps! Setting the XSLT to stripping whitespace and ignoring linefeeds at
least produced a predictable and reasonable outcome similar to what you
presented above. It took me some time to come to this point...
I also came to the conclusion that I have to offer the FO-Processor a
document that it can reliably transform, and this means, the original
document has to follow some rules. My first idea was to "clean up" the
original XML document and then transform it to the FO-document, but then I
thought, maybe, the whitespace can be dealt with in the FOP. I think that
was stupid :(, never mind.
My problem is that in the document, the elements look like this (_ and * for
normal and small nonbreaking whitespace at the crucial part):
<p>The text_<note>to which the note refers_<item>the note
itselft</item></note>.</p>
This produces good results, as long as the note is not a footnote, to which
I have to add a number in the text, which always follows a small whitespace.
The text will then look like this:
The text to which the note refers_*1.
It should look like this:
The text to whch the note refers*1.
To achieve this result, some of my notes (marked up with certain attributes)
have to be positioned differently in the text:
<p>The text_<note>to which the note refers<item>the note
itselft</item></note>.</p>
I should in these cases try to get rid of the normal space in the original
document before the item element tag.
Thinking about this problem and your advice about producing a document that
the processor can handle, it becomes clear, that such a clean-up step for
the original document to follow some formal rules is very important before
the transformation to the FO document can start.
The original document is academic text, and the aim of the XML language I am
working is to offer a tool for academic writers (me in the first place)
where we only have to think about content, nothing about style, tag names
and formal rules. I try to achieve this in several fields of text creation,
but one important factor is that it should not make a difference in the
writing stage, whether there is a whitespace character before or after an
element tag.
Like this:
<p>The text_<note>_to which the note refers_<item>_the note
itselft</item></note>.</p>
should produce identical results like this:
<p>The text<note>to which the note refers<item>the note
itselft</item></note>.</p>
If anybody has a hint of how to get create a unified original document from
these different options, I will be happy. I thought of adressing these
points (spaces before and after element tags) with XPointer or RegEx, so if
there is an advice about which one to use, I will start learning this
technique at first. Or anything else if necessary!
Thanks for listening,
Maria
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Andreas Delmelle <an...@telenet.be>.
On 25 Mar 2009, at 00:33, Maria2009 wrote:
Hi Maria
> this is good news indeed. I will look for these recommendations and
> come
> back to this forum again.
Some follow-up on this:
Hope you have better luck than I did. I could have sworn I had read
something like that... :-/
Maybe I'm mixing up things, and the reference I remember is not
Unicode at all.
> Any help and further advise then is appreciated! I
> am learning all this by doing.
At any rate, my original intention was not so much to 'correct' as to
'inform'. XSL-FO mentions absolutely nothing about non-XML white-space
characters. The only references to be found are to the four codepoints
I mentioned earlier. As far as XSL-FO is concerned, a zero-width space
is just another character.
On the other hand, things like Unicode line-separators or paragraph-
breaks aren't spoken about either, but FOP does deal with them as an
end-user would expect.
In the meantime, I have re-read your original post, and:
> Now, for some of these nested elements I have to create special
> whitespace
> (like non-breaking small spaces), so I do not need the whitespace
> from the
> normalization. In other words: Instead of "text_text-from-
> element_text"
> (with _ for normal spaces between the elements), I want
> "text*text-from-element_text" (with * for non breaking whitespaces)
> but get
> "text_*text-from-element_text".
What does the generated FO look like *exactly*? If there is any
indentation or a linefeed, one regular space-character will always
survive default settings for "white-space-collapse", "white-space-
treatment" and "linefeed-treatment".
You could experiment by setting the property 'linefeed-
treatment="ignore"' on the surrounding block. If that relieves the
issue, then it means that an unnecessary linefeed is present in the
FO. For example the FO looks like (literally):
<fo:block>
text
<fo:inline>*text-from-element</fo:inline>
...
The white-space between the word 'text' and the fo:inline would yield
one space that survives, since from the point-of-view of the processor
(FOP) it just appears in between two characters.
If you were to make that:
<fo:block>text<fo:inline>*text-from-element</fo:inline>
...
then the output would be precisely what you seem to expect. Could be
that this particular issue is solvable by adhering to best practices
and simply producing processor-friendly (as opposed to human-readable)
XML.
In other words: make sure the FO result does not contain ANY white-
space that you don't want there, and FOP will behave. It treats
regular spaces as XSL-FO prescribes, and for the rest, it only assumes
that every other type of space is there because it was intended.
HTH!
Andreas
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Maria2009 <ma...@shinoto.de>.
Andreas,
this is good news indeed. I will look for these recommendations and come
back to this forum again. Any help and further advise then is appreciated! I
am learning all this by doing.
Maria
Andreas Delmelle-2 wrote:
>
> On 24 Mar 2009, at 18:27, Andreas Delmelle wrote:
>
>> <snip />
>>> What I thought of is a collaps not only between the normal spaces,
>>> but also between normal and
>>> special spaces.
>>
>> That would be an extension to XSL-FO.
>
> Come to think of it: not necessarily an extension needed. Look around
> in the Unicode references. I believe there are recommendations for
> space-normalization as well. If we could do it by implementing an open
> standard, all the better.
>
> ...
>
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Andreas Delmelle <an...@telenet.be>.
On 24 Mar 2009, at 18:27, Andreas Delmelle wrote:
> <snip />
>> What I thought of is a collaps not only between the normal spaces,
>> but also between normal and
>> special spaces.
>
> That would be an extension to XSL-FO.
Come to think of it: not necessarily an extension needed. Look around
in the Unicode references. I believe there are recommendations for
space-normalization as well. If we could do it by implementing an open
standard, all the better.
Regards
Andreas
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Maria2009 <ma...@shinoto.de>.
Hi Andreas,
I am sorry that I did not make this clear: It was a playing with words, so I
did not speak of white-space in the sense of the XSL-FO definitions, but in
the sense of characters creating "white space".
But since my status is that of not-knowing much by default, you were correct
in assuming that I did not know that ;).
Maria
Andreas Delmelle-2 wrote:
>
> On 24 Mar 2009, at 14:27, Maria2009 wrote:
>
> Hi Maria
>
>> the whitespace collaps works in my case as well, but whitespace
>> collaps
>> basically works only with the same normal space character.
>
> Minor correction: with all XML white-space, that is
> - a regular space
> - a linefeed
> - a tab or,
> - a carriage-return.
>
> All other types of white-space (like zero-width space, non-breaking
> space etc.) is unaffected by that property.
>
> See the definition of white-space-collapse, and white-space-treatment
> in XSL-FO.
> ...
>
> Regards
>
> Andreas
>
>
>
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Andreas Delmelle <an...@telenet.be>.
On 24 Mar 2009, at 14:27, Maria2009 wrote:
Hi Maria
> the whitespace collaps works in my case as well, but whitespace
> collaps
> basically works only with the same normal space character.
Minor correction: with all XML white-space, that is
- a regular space
- a linefeed
- a tab or,
- a carriage-return.
All other types of white-space (like zero-width space, non-breaking
space etc.) is unaffected by that property.
See the definition of white-space-collapse, and white-space-treatment
in XSL-FO.
> What I thought of is a collaps not only between the normal spaces,
> but also between normal and
> special spaces.
That would be an extension to XSL-FO.
Regards
Andreas
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Re: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Maria2009 <ma...@shinoto.de>.
Chris,
the whitespace collaps works in my case as well, but whitespace collaps
basically works only with the same normal space character. What I thought of
is a collaps not only between the normal spaces, but also between normal and
special spaces.
Best,
Maria
cbowditch wrote:
>
> ...
> XSL-FO has this feature already: white-space-collapse. By default this
> is set to true, so 2 spaces together will be collapsed to a single
> space. So I'm not sure what is going wrong in your case.
>
> ...
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AW: Normalizing space and special spaces
Posted by Georg Datterl <ge...@geneon.de>.
Hi Maria,
If there's a sequence of <normal space><non-breaking-space><zero-width-space>, which one would survive?
Regards,
Georg Datterl
------ Kontakt ------
Georg Datterl
Geneon media solutions gmbh
Gutenstetter Straße 8a
90449 Nürnberg
HRB Nürnberg: 17193
Geschäftsführer: Yong-Harry Steiert
Tel.: 0911/36 78 88 - 26
Fax: 0911/36 78 88 - 20
www.geneon.de
Weitere Mitglieder der Willmy MediaGroup:
IRS Integrated Realization Services GmbH: www.irs-nbg.de
Willmy PrintMedia GmbH: www.willmy.de
Willmy Consult & Content GmbH: www.willmycc.de
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Maria2009 [mailto:maria@shinoto.de]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 24. März 2009 12:03
An: fop-users@xmlgraphics.apache.org
Betreff: Normalizing space and special spaces
Hello,
I am not sure whether this is the best place to present my question or suggestion, so please feel free to tell me if it is not:
In my xml-documents (unstructured text) I have nested elements which result in nice PDFs, where the text flow is always correctly separated by single spaces thanks to whitespace normalization.
Now, for some of these nested elements I have to create special whitespace (like non-breaking small spaces), so I do not need the whitespace from the normalization. In other words: Instead of "text_text-from-element_text"
(with _ for normal spaces between the elements), I want "text*text-from-element_text" (with * for non breaking whitespaces) but get "text_*text-from-element_text".
In the beginning I thought of "cleaning up" the FO-document after a first transformation from XML to FO, but on the other hand I think that it is anyway unlogical to normalize whitepace but exclude the typographical whitespaces (or spaces) when creating a document for print.
So I suggest to integrate a feature in the FOP to clean up double spaces that come into being because for typography one needs to work with several space characters.
May be the FO to PDF stage is not the right place?
Best and thanks like always,
Maria
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