Hi, Roger, Joel, One more thing in addition to this, the xml:space attribute does not need to be specified directly in the XML, it can be defined as an attribute with a default value in the associated schema/DTD. For example a codeblock defined in the DITA DTD:

<!ENTITY % codeblock.attributes               "%display-atts;                spectitle                           CDATA                                     #IMPLIED                xml:space                           (preserve)                                     #FIXED                                     'preserve' More about this in the user's guide:

https://www.oxygenxml.com/doc/versions/24.1/ug-editor/topics/format-and-inde... Regards, Radu Radu Coravu Oxygen XML Editor On 5/13/22 21:55, Joel Kalvesmaki wrote:

Hi Roger,

For such elements, try adding @xml:space="preserve". Oxygen will preserve those elements, and anyone you share your files with will understand that the space is meaningful.

Best wishes,

jk

On 2022-05-13 08:13, Roger L Costello wrote:

...

Hi Folks,

I love the "Format and Indent" button in Oxygen.

But it has a gotcha!

It replaces multiple spaces in your data with a single space. For example, in my XML document it changed this:

<TRM_IDENT>GBE6   BELGRANO 6</TRM_IDENT>

to this:

<TRM_IDENT>GBE6 BELGRANO 6</TRM_IDENT>

See the change in the data?

GBE6   BELGRANO 6 GBE6 BELGRANO 6

Now you might think, "Well, what's the big deal? Why does it matter that Oxygen discarded a few spaces?"

Actually, it is a huge deal!

In my use case, I have a program which checks that the TRM_IDENT value matches every TRM_IDENT value in another XML file that had not been formatted by Oxygen. My program kept returning an error saying that the values don't match. It took me many hours to find the problem: Oxygen changed the data in the first file.

I did some research and found that Oxygen has a way to specify that space is to be preserved during a format and indent operation: Preferences/Editor/Format/XML click on "Preserve text as it is".

If you're using Oxygen, I recommend that you open it up right now and click on that option. If you don't, then one day you might run into the same situation and waste many hours trying to figure out why things aren't working.

/Roger _______________________________________________ oXygen-user mailing list oXygen-user@oxygenxml.com https://www.oxygenxml.com/mailman/listinfo/oxygen-user