Is the CSS 'white-space' propert supposed to be able to affect the whitespace between block elements?
For example, in the document used as an example in "Whitespace in the DOM" as follows, there is whitespace between the </h1> and the <p>:
<!-- My document -->
<html>
<head>
<title>My Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Header</h1>
<p>
Paragraph
</p>
</body>
</html>
This whitespace is normally removed; for example, the XHTML spec says that a conforming user agent must meet all of the following criteria:
In elements where the 'xml:space' attribute is set to 'preserve', the user agent must leave all whitespace characters intact (with the exception of leading and trailing whitespace characters, which should be removed). Otherwise, whitespace is handled according to the following rules:
- All whitespace surrounding block elements should be removed.
- Leading and trailing whitespace inside a block element must be removed.
- Line feed characters within a block element must be converted into a space (except when the 'xml:space' attribute is set to 'preserve').
- A sequence of white space characters must be reduced to a single space character (except when the 'xml:space' attribute is set to 'preserve').
My questions are as follows:
If I use the CSS white-space property on the
<body>, should this be able to preserve the whitespace between block elements (e.g. between the</h1>and the<p>)? Or is whitespace between blocks always removed, with the white-space property only affecting whitespace within blocks?The XHTML spec says that a
<body>cannot directly contain PCDATA (i.e. text). Does that mean that whitespace (being a kind of text) that's a direct child of the<body>tag is always insignificant/ignored, and cannot be enabled via CSS? If yes and whitespace between the</h1>and the<p>in the above example were ignored because it's a direct child of the<body>, would/should that whitespace still be ignored if there were a<div style="white-space: pre">immediately within the<body>and enclosing all the other elements?The 'white-space' processing model starts with, "Any text that is directly contained inside a block element (not inside an inline element) should be treated as an anonymous inline element". What should I understand about pure whitespace (whitespace with no text)?
Is there a rule (and if so, where is this rule defined) about removing whitespace within inline elements? For example in the following sequence
<p>The <strong> lazy </strong> dog.</p>should the whitespace after the<strong>tag be removed? (The HTML 4 spec has a rule about this for line breaks; I was wondering whether this rule also applied to other, non-line-beak whitespace, and whether this rule is mentioned/defined/allowed/assumed in any XHTML or CSS specification.)