Canonical form of XML

Question

What does it signify to state ‘the canonical’ form of the XML?

Answer 1

The purpose of Canonical XML is to define a standard format for an XML document. Canonical XML is a very strict XML syntax, which lets documents in canonical XML be compared directly.

By using this strict syntax makes it simpler to see whether two XML documents are similar. For illustration, a part of text in one document might read Black and White, while the similar section of text might read Black and White in the other document and even in the other. If you compare those three documents byte by byte, they will be dissimilar. However if you write them all in the canonical XML, that specifies each and every aspect of the syntax you can use, these three documents would all have similar version of this text (that would be Black and White) and could be compared devoid of problem.