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http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24506 New line elimination at end of directives Summary: New line elimination at end of directives Product: Tomcat 4 Version: Unknown Platform: All OS/Version: All Status: NEW Severity: Enhancement Priority: Other Component: Jasper AssignedTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ReportedBy: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] JSP pages are a templating system which is using a meta language (the JSP directives, declarations, scriplets and expressions) and literals from the output language (HTML, XML or other text based fragments). The JSP specification does not deal the new lines (or white space in general) introduced by the meta language. These new lines are used for readability reasons. In most cases the output language being HTML or XML extra empty lines (or white space in general) does not have any semantical impact, so probably this is the main reason why this issue was neglected. In HTML/XML empty lines can be a problem in the following cases: - JSP pages in general have may directives at the top of the page, this leads to may empty lines at the top of the generated page, problems with this: - Internet Explorer may not properly detect the page type for XHTML pages since it is doing a limited look ahead (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/networking/moniker/overview/appendix_a.asp) - viewing the source of these pages shows a blank screen first (trivial, but how many developers over the years are dealing with this annoying fact?) - the content of <pre> or <textarea> blocks in HTML - the content of CDATA blocks in XML In the case of other formats than HTML/XML (like plain text) the extra empty lines can be a real problem. Other templating languages are dealing with this very same issue: http://freemarker.sourceforge.net/docs/dgui_misc_whitespace.html#dgui_misc_whitespace_stripping While the proper solution would be in the specification, changing that is a lengthy process (not to mention that it is almos impossible for an individual). Since the spec is not saying anything about this issue and there is an obvious problem I think that it would be proper to provide a limited fix in Tomcat. The limited fix I am suggesting is as follows: - for directives and declarations for which the end tag is followed only by white space consider that white space and the new line as part of the directive and don't output it - for scriplets and expressions don't apply this A switch or setting could be provided to enable this behaviour. Cheers, Marius --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
