The precise rules in SGML are very complicated, but in general a newline is ignored after a start tag and before an end tag. This allows SGML documents to be somewhat pretty-printed, by starting tags on a new line. There is a lot of confusion over this issue. The first applications that are based on XML seem to assume that not only one newline is ignored, but that all whitespace, even multiple lines, is to be ignored. The 30 June draft of XML on the other hand says that no whitespace is to be ignored, not even a single newline.
Most people meanwhile seem to agree that ignoring one newline is a good compromise.
It allows tags to be put on separate lines, while not requiring meaningful whitespace to be escaped. That is therefore what the syntax below describes. Default attributes Especially if an application uses the linking module, it will benefit a lot from being able to specify defaults for attributes. The 30 June draft relies on the meta-syntax to provide default attribute values. Restricting the syntax and setting defaults are logically two very different things and should not be mixed so easily.