Re: [xml] Serialization of documents without encoding

[Nick Wellnhofer <wellnhofer aevum de>]

On 27/09/2018 10:59, Roumen Petrov wrote:
> Let consider case as "file" mode.

> Let consider case as "stream" code.

I'm not only talking about xmllint but the serialization API (xmlSave*, 
xmlNodeDump*) in general.

> Now about above test samples . if content is stored in file xmllint works fine 
> with encoding(=codeset=charset).
>
> $ cat test-noencoding.xml
> <?xml version="1.0"?><doc>Käse</doc>

No, it doesn't work fine:

$ xmllint test-noencoding.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<doc>K&#xE4;se</doc>

> (2) Next a-umlaut character is encoded in hexadecimal. Minor inconsistency 
> between "stream" and "file" mode.

As shown above, "file" mode can also produce unwanted numeric character 
references.

> (3) Problem is that in "scream" mode xmllint application ignores value of 
> encode argument:
> $ echo '<?xml version="1.0"?><doc>Käse</doc>' | xmllint - --encode UTF-8
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <doc>K&#xE4;se</doc>

Right, there is an inconsistency in xmllint. But that's not my point.

>  From my point of view (1) and (2) are minor non-important issues. Only (3) 
> could be fixed with low priority.

Unneeded numeric character references in UTF-8 output are not a minor issue. 
If you're working with non-Latin scripts, it makes serialized XML files 
unreadable for humans and blows up the file size.

Nick