About whitespace display

XML files often contain a certain amount of whitespace, an area of the display or print page without print or pictures, caused by a contiguous sequence of nonprinting characters. Some whitespace is a necessary part of the data, like the spaces between words. Other whitespace is there to make the format more readable, for example, by indenting child elements.

Consider the following XML data and its representation in Rational® ClearCase® XML Diff Merge:

<play>
  • <title>As You Like It</title>
  • <author>William Shakespeare</author>
</play>

This data contains several end-of-line and tab nodes. Such whitespace-only nodes can usually be safely ignored when you compare XML files. However, during a merge, XML Diff Merge always assumes that differences in whitespace are significant. It also needs to preserve line breaks and indentation in the merged output. For these reasons, you cannot select the None Visible option for a merge.


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