Re: [xml] XHTML Doc serialization and meta element

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2005 at 07:50:37AM -0400, Rob Richards wrote:
> I ran into a situation on a double free on a node and tracked down the 
> issue to serializing an XHTML document.
> xmlDocContentDumpOutput calls htmlSetMetaEncoding for XHTML documents 
> which ends up altering the internal document by freeing the meta element 
> and adding its own. Same thing happens with xmlNodeDumpOutput and 
> htmlSaveFileFormat as well. Though htmlDocDump and htmlSaveFile don't 
> mess with the meta element.
> 
> Problem with this is if a meta element already exists, I don't see why 
> it should be altering the origional doc at all (which is something I do 
> not want to happen). Also, it ends up forcing the content to be 
> text/html when the origional document had set it to 
> application/xhtml+xml. Now according to the specs 
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/), when using this media type, 
> the http-equiv should not be included (W3C definition of should not) , 
> so origional document is wrong in that respect, but this then means the 
> meta tag should not automatically be added by the library either when 
> the document is to be served as that media type.
> 
> It basically comes down to it would be one thing if the serialized 
> version of the tree were altered - would have to think about wether it 
> really was an issue or not - but I don't think an internal document 
> should be altered during a serialization.
> 
> Thoughts?

  Just trying to follow the best practices outlined by XHTML1 W3C spec
    http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#C_9
Modifying the document is not ideal I agree, but it's simpler than trying to
get all user application fixed !

  "Problem with this is if a meta element already exists"
Which meta ? there is a zillion of those possible. Things are always clearer
with a complete example.

Daniel

-- 
Daniel Veillard      | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/
veillard redhat com  | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit  http://xmlsoft.org/
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