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| White space | |||||
White space is used to separate keywords and is also used to separate punctuation characters from keywords, or from each other. White space can be made up of spaces, tabs, carriage returns, and newline characters. (On some systems, the "RETURN" or "ENTER" key inserts newline characters; on others it inserts both a carriage return and a new line.)
The amount of white space you use is a stylistic decision, and will generally have no effect on the behavior of your OmniMark programs. For example, the following examples are equivalent:
element (blist | nlist)
element (blist |
nlist)
There is one situation in which white space is required around punctuation. A hyphen character can be used within OmniMark names, to indicate a negative integer, or separately as a minus sign. When used as a minus sign rather than as part of a name, be sure to include white space on both sides of the hyphen. In fact, it is probably wise to adopt the habit of surrounding all operators with spaces. For example, "a-b" is a single name, while "a - b" is interpreted by OmniMark as a minus sign and the expression represents the difference between the counter "a" and the counter "b".
OmniMark programs are easier to read when they are formatted consistently. In most samples provided, actions are indented and rules are separated by blank lines. However, you are encouraged to establish your own formatting conventions.
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