sigil ignores the pre-wrap tag and clears the document formatting

[AxaRu]

Bug.
Present in versions 2.5.0, 2.5.1, 2.5.2

Curent cersion: 2.5.2
Loaded Qt: 6.4.2

Tested on
OS: Linux Mint 22.1
Release: 22.1
Codename: xia

Bug description.

I have this class in my CSS file

p.function {
  white-space: pre-wrap;
  margin-top: 1.5em;
  font-family: listing;
  font-size: 0.9em;
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: italic;
  text-align: left;
  color: darkblue;
  background-color: #CCFFFF;
  border-top: #00CCCC solid 2px;
}

In XHTML, I manually did the following formatting

    <p class="function">esp_err_t <span class="function_name">i2c_new_master_bus</span>(
        const i2c_master_bus_config_t *bus_config,
        i2c_master_bus_handle_t *ret_bus_handle)</p>

The resulting document looks like this


After I ran the Mend and Prettify All HTML Files command, Sigil removed all white space

    <p class="function">esp_err_t <span class="function_name">i2c_new_master_bus</span>( const i2c_master_bus_config_t *bus_config, i2c_master_bus_handle_t *ret_bus_handle)</p>

Аnd the resulting document looks like this

[KevinH]

It works as designed. You used no pre-wrap (pre) tag. Prettify assumes you want to actually change xhtml whitespace to prettify the layout. Prettifying has no idea about your css, it is run on xhtml source. If you want to preserve your pre-wrapped code, through the prettifying process you need to use the pre and code xhtml tags and not assume css is doing anything here as css can and does change independently of your xhtml. It was designed to do that.

So either use pre/code tags in your xhtml source before running Prettify or don't choose to Prettify the xhtml code.

[AxaRu]

KevinH, thank you for your reply.

Here is a detailed explanation of how the tag works.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/...SS/white-space

I understand how prettify works. I consider this behavior to be a bug.
In my case, instead of returning the carriage and inserting a series of spaces, I use the following code as a workaround:

<br/>\&\#160; \&\#160; \&\#160; \&\#160;

(No backslash needed)
This gives the desired result, but it's not very convenient.

[KevinH]

Again, not a bug. Prettify works on xhtml content as designed. You need to add xhtml pre tag if you want to protect its contents from having whitespace modified and to be semantically correct you should probably be adding the code tag given your contents.

Again css can be used to pre-wrap whitspace, make an inline tag block, or make a block tag inline. The Prettify routine in Sigil ***ignores*** all css on purpose since css can change how normal tags are defined. So use the "pre" and "code" tags in xhtml to protect regions from whitespace being changed in Prettify, or just use Mend without Prettify.

There are other ways to deal with it but if all you want to do is indent a line, then define css for that line and provide a suitable text margin.

I personally would consider a series of non-breaking spaces to be a poor solution when pre tags and css exist to handle your case properly if you feel you must run Mend and Prettify instead of just running Mend.

[DNSB]

Perhaps you could use a CSS based solution to your indent requirement which does involve replacing your spaces with a <br/> and using some CSS that I normally use to fake a list.

p.function {
  margin-top: 1.5em;
  font-family: listing;
  font-size: 0.9em;
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: italic;
  text-align: left;
  color: darkblue;
  background-color: #CCFFFF;
  border-top: #00CCCC solid 2px;
  text-indent: -2.5em;
  margin-left: 2.5em;
  margin-right: 1.25em;
}

<p class="function">esp_err_t <span class="function_name">i2c_new_master_bus</span>(
<br/>const i2c_master_bus_config_t *bus_config,
<br/>i2c_master_bus_handle_t *ret_bus_handle)</p>

Please note that this will wrap to a single line when prettified and you will need to play with the alignment of the top border since the 2.5em margin will affect it.