XML Pocket Reference, 3rd Edition

The xml:space Attribute

The special attribute xml:space indicates that whitespace should be preserved as specified in element content.

Example

<message xmlns="http://simonstl.com/ns/examples/message"
         xml:space="preserve" lang="en" date="20051006" >
  THIS
       IS A
            MESSAGE!
</message>

Description

XML processors must always pass all characters that aren’t markup through to an application. When xml:space is used on an element with a value of preserve, the whitespace in that element’s content must be preserved as is by the application that processes it. The whitespace is always passed on to the processing application, but xml:space provides the application with a hint regarding how to process it. Another legal value for xml:space is default, which indicates that default whitespace processing by the application is acceptable (this is the default behavior in absence of the xml:space attribute). The attribute and its value also apply to child elements.

Tip

A validating XML processor must also report whitespace in element-only content (that is, the whitespace between tags in an element that can contain only elements, not character data).

See also

§2.10