When does whitespace matter in HTML?

Question

example 1

onetwo


    one
    <         


        
      

Answer 1

The reality is somewhat complicated. There are two parts

1. What the parsing does.
2. What the rendering does.

The parsing actually removes very little white space whilst parsing text (as opposed to markup). It will remove an initial line feed character at the start of and <pre> elements and also on the invalid <code><listing></code> element, but that's about it.</p> <p>Jukka refers to the HTML 4.01 section B.3.1 Line breaks saying that "a line break immediately following a start tag must be ignored, as must a line break immediately before an end tag" but that is in a non-normative appendix and browsers do not follow it except for the three elements mentioned above. </p> <p>That can be demonstrated using Jukka's example here on line breaks with no spaces . Note the <code>#text:</code> nodes around the button elmeents in the tree display, and that if the line breaks are removed, the '#text:` nodes no longer appear.</p> <p>We can also see that the rule is not applied by using that first example from the specification here. By adding <code>display:pre</code> it's clear that the line breaks are not exactly ignored but that the rendering the two examples the same is merely a property of the default white-space handling being <code>white-space:normal</code></p> <p>Which brings us to the relevant spec, which is 16.6.1 The 'white-space' processing model in the CSS spec. This covers the systematic rules to be applied to the text characters for each of the white-space setting values.</p> </p> <div class="appendcontent"> </div> </div> <div class="jieda-reply"> <span class="jieda-zan button_agree" type="zan" data-id='606278'> <i class="iconfont icon-zan"></i> <em>0</em> </span> <span type="reply" class="showpinglun" data-id="606278"> <i class="iconfont icon-svgmoban53"></i> 讨论(0) </span> <div class="jieda-admin"> </div> <div class="noreplaytext bb"> <center><div> <a href="https://www.e-learn.cn/qa/q-156651.html"> 查看其它3个回答 </a> </div></center> </div> </div> <div class="comments-mod " style="display: none; float:none;padding-top:10px;" id="comment_606278"> <div class="areabox clearfix"> <form class="layui-form" action=""> <div class="layui-form-item"> <label class="layui-form-label" style="padding-left:0px;width:60px;">发布评论:</label> <div class="layui-input-block" style="margin-left:90px;"> <input type="text" placeholder="不少于5个字" AUTOCOMPLETE="off" class="comment-input layui-input" name="content" /> <input type='hidden' value='0' name='replyauthor' /> </div> <div class="mar-t10"><span class="fr layui-btn layui-btn-sm addhuidapinglun" data-id="606278">提交评论 </span></div> </div> </form> </div> <hr> <ul class="my-comments-list nav"> <li class="loading"> <img src='https://www.e-learn.cn/qa/static/css/default/loading.gif' align='absmiddle' />  加载中... </li> </ul> </div> </li> </ul> <div class="layui-form layui-form-pane"> <form id="huidaform" name="answerForm" method="post"> <div class="layui-form-item layui-form-text"> <a name="comment"></a> <div class="layui-input-block"> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.e-learn.cn/qa/static/js/neweditor/ueditor.config.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.e-learn.cn/qa/static/js/neweditor/ueditor.all.js"></script> <script type="text/plain" id="editor" name="content" style="width:100%;height:200px;"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var isueditor=1; var editor = UE.getEditor('editor',{ //这里可以选择自己需要的工具按钮名称,此处仅选择如下五个 toolbars:[['source','fullscreen', '|', 'undo', 'redo', '|', 'bold', 'italic', 'underline', 'fontborder', 'strikethrough', 'removeformat', 'formatmatch', 'autotypeset', 'blockquote', 'pasteplain', '|', 'forecolor', 'backcolor', 'insertorderedlist', 'insertunorderedlist', 'selectall', 'cleardoc', '|', 'rowspacingtop', 'rowspacingbottom', 'lineheight', '|', 'customstyle', 'paragraph', 'fontfamily', 'fontsize', '|', 'indent', '|', 'justifyleft', 'justifycenter', 'justifyright', 'justifyjustify', '|', 'link', 'unlink', 'anchor', '|', 'simpleupload', 'insertimage', 'scrawl', 'insertvideo', 'attachment', 'map', 'insertcode', '|', 'horizontal', '|', 'preview', 'searchreplace', 'drafts']], initialContent:'', //关闭字数统计 wordCount:false, zIndex:2, //关闭elementPath elementPathEnabled:false, //默认的编辑区域高度 initialFrameHeight:250 //更多其他参数，请参考ueditor.config.js中的配置项 //更多其他参数，请参考ueditor.config.js中的配置项 }); editor.ready(function() { editor.setDisabled(); }); $("#editor").find("*").css("max-width","362px"); </script> </div> </div> <div class="layui-form-item"> <label for="L_vercode" class="layui-form-label">验证码</label> <div class="layui-input-inline"> <input type="text" id="code" name="code" value="" required lay-verify="required" placeholder="图片验证码" autocomplete="off" class="layui-input"> </div> <div class="layui-form-mid"> <span style="color: #c00;"><img class="hand" src="https://www.e-learn.cn/qa/user/code.html" onclick="javascript:updatecode();" id="verifycode"><a class="changecode" href="javascript:updatecode();"> 看不清?</a></span> </div> </div> <div class="layui-form-item"> <input type="hidden" value="156651" id="ans_qid" name="qid"> <input type="hidden" id="tokenkey" name="tokenkey" value=''/> <input type="hidden" value="When does whitespace matter in HTML?" id="ans_title" name="title"> <div class="layui-btn layui-btn-disabled" id="ajaxsubmitasnwer" >提交回复</div> </div> </form> </div> </div> <input type="hidden" value="156651" id="adopt_qid" name="qid" /> <input type="hidden" id="adopt_answer" value="0" name="aid" /> </div> <div class="layui-col-md4"> <!-- 热门讨论问题 --> <dl class="fly-panel fly-list-one"> <dt class="fly-panel-title">热议问题</dt> <!-- 本周热门讨论问题显示10条-->