Stefan,
On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 10:01 AM, Stefan Hinz <> wrote:
>> We are internally using different docbook editors (vi, emacs, serna
>> and xmlmind). To some extent, we would like to preserve a nice and
>> clear history of revision of our XML files in SVN (subversion). For
>> this we use a script based on xmllint --format to reformat to a unique
>> presentation. This has work quite well until today. Could someone
>> please let me know if the following situation is an issue with either
>> XML or docbook itself:
>>
>> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>> <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
>> "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd">
>> <article>
>> <section>
>> <title>Introduction</title>
>> <para>Before</para>
>> <screen><computeroutput>a.txt
>> b.txt
>> </computeroutput>
>> </screen>
>> <para>After</para>
>> </section>
>> </article>
>>
>> while xmllint --format prefers:
>>
>> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>> <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
>> "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd">
>> <article>
>> <section>
>> <title>Introduction</title>
>> <para>Before</para>
>> <screen>
>> <computeroutput>a.txt
>> b.txt
>> </computeroutput>
>> </screen>
>> <para>After</para>
>> </section>
>> </article>
>
>
> The latter is wrong. Stuff within "verbatim" containers such as <screen> or
> <programlisting> shouldn't be re-formatted at all, but rather preserved as
> is.
>
> I'd suggest using Paul DuBois' XML Formatter which does what it's supposed
> to do. It's included in many Linux distros already, but if it's not in yours
> (or if you're not using Linux) you can find it here:
>
> http://www.kitebird.com/software/xmlformat/
$ wget http://www.kitebird.com/software/xmlformat/xmlformat-1.04.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz xmlformat-1.04.tar.gz
$ cd xmlformat-1.04
$ cp xmlformat.pl /usr/local/bin/xmlformat
$ xmlformat input.xml > new.xml
$ cat new.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd">
<article>
<section>
<title>Introduction</title>
<para>Before</para>
<screen>
<computeroutput>a.txt
b.txt
</computeroutput>
</screen>
<para>After</para>
</section>
</article>
This is *exactly* what I am trying to avoid. xmllint and xmlformat
seems to produce the exact same output. Is it working as supposed on
your machine ? Which version are you using ?
Thanks again,
--
Mathieu
