327276 - Text inside xml prettyprinting should be monospace, pre-formatted by default

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: XML, defect)

Description

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

That's also what IE6 is doing.

Comment 1

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Attachment: testcase

Comment 2

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Attachment: patch

This fixes it.

But I think that the alternative Monospace stylesheet isn't useful then anymore.

Comment 3

[Axel Hecht]

Is there any rationale for this?

Sounds like something that could be more widely discussed in the xml newsgroup.

Comment 4

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

IE6 is doing it and it makes 

Comment 5

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Reasons (for me) why xml prettyprinting of text inside xml prettyprint
should be monospaced, pre-formatted:
- IE6 is doing it.
- It makes text inside xml ofter more readable, because everything is
not thrown on one line.

Comment 6

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I seem to recall sicking did things this way on purpose...

Comment 7

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

> - IE6 is doing it.

If IE6 jumped off a bridge would you do it? ;)

Seriously, I don't care what IE does, I care what the best thing to do is. IE only uses monospace for CDATA nodes which IMO is wrong and arbitary.

> - It makes text inside xml ofter more readable, because everything is
> not thrown on one line.

I can't agree that monospace text is more readable then propotional spacing. Most books and websites use proportional spacing fonts for their freeflow text.

If the text lines are too long maybe we should consider setting a maximum width instead.

Comment 8

[Axel Hecht]

I'm tempted to file a bug to add -moz-column to our xml pretty printing ;-)

(just kidding)

Comment 9

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Feel free to wontfix this bug.

Just some comments:
Mozilla more or less copied the xml pretty printing behavior from IE, not?
So I think it's even more important to look at what IE does (but I think it's always to look at what the dominant browser of a particular platform is doing).

In reply to comment #7)
> Seriously, I don't care what IE does, I care what the best thing to do is. 
The 'not caring about what IE does' sounds odd to me (espcially since this is a copied feature from IE).
I hope you were thinking more in the line of: 'I care about what IE does, but I care even more about what the best thing is'.

> IE only uses monospace for CDATA nodes which IMO is wrong and arbitary.
IE also uses monospace for comment nodes (which in this case Mozilla is also doing for some reason).

> If the text lines are too long maybe we should consider setting a maximum width
> instead.
I guess so, although I'm not so enthousiastic about that.

Comment 10

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

marking WONTFIX since I still havn't heard any good reason to do this other then that IE does this. And I think what we do is better.

Alternative patches I would consider are
* limit the maximum with of the flowing text
* a button that switches the selected stylesheet.

Comment 11

[Kevin Brosnan]

*** Bug 261284 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

*** Bug 344864 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

*** Bug 347005 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[eldmannen]

Reason to use monospace is to increase the readability.
Since the raw XML data is basically "source code", it should be presented as source code is usually done which is in a monospaced font.

If you right-click on a page, and select "View Page Source", then it is presented in a monospace font. Then why isnt the XML data presented in a monospace font?
Inconsistency is bad.