[jdom-interest] Bug and query

[Bradley S. Huffman]

Eric VERGNAUD writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm new to this list, so first I would like to congratulate and thanks the
> people involved in the creation of jdom, which is exactly what I've been
> waiting for to start working with xml.
> 
> Haviong said that, I have 2 questions:
> 
>  - is this the place to file a bug ? If so, here is one:
>     in XmlOutputter.java, there is come inconsistency in the way
>     printElement, printElementNamespace, and printNamespace work together.
>     This sometimes leads to the following production:
>     
>     <tag xmlns:'mynamesapce'>
>         <childtag xmlns:>
>         some data
>         </childtag>
>     </tag>
> 
>     This happens when you set the namespace for an element, but not for one
> of its child element.
>     This can be fixed by changing the code for printElementNamespace by the
> following:
>         Namespace ns = element.getNamespace();
>         if (ns != Namespace.XML_NAMESPACE && ns != Namespace.NO_NAMESPACE)
>         {
>             printNamespace(ns, out, namespaces);
>         }
 
Which version of JDOM are you using? In beta 9 and the current cvs, ns should
should never be equal to XML_NAMESPACE (which is prefix "xml").  Using the
prefix "xml" or one that starts with "xml" will throw a exception in 
Namespace.getNamespace. Second "xmlns" is only printed in printNamespace()
and it always prints a "=" and surrounds the URI with double quotes, so I
don't see how your example output could happen.

>  - is this the place to discuss some implementation choices ? If so, I am
> not convinced by the following:
> 
>  in XmlOutputter.java, the 'output' method ends by the following code:
>   
>     // Output final line separator
>     // We output this no matter what the newline flags say
>     out.write(currentFormat.lineSeparator);
> 
>     out.flush();
> 
> Is writing a line separator at the end of the Xml stream mandatory ? I don't
> know the answer, but I guess it's no, so I think it should be caller's
> responsability to add this newline, because while this newline maybe fine in
> a xml file, it may not be fine at all in a wireless xml stream, when the
> other end is expecting a perfectly-formed (not just well-formed) document.
> In fact I've met the situation where this newline would cause the other end
> parser to fail at some point, and got stuck because I do not have access to
> that parser which resides compiled on a mobile device.

No it's not mandatory, but it should not matter. If it does, then that 
application or the parser it uses it broken.

> So I would very much prefer:
>  
>     // Output final line separator
>     // We output this no matter what the newline flags say
>     newline(out);
> 
>     out.flush();
> 
> What do you think ?

Have to look, but not printing it when in "raw" mode and printing it
when in "pretty-printing" mode seems harmless and reasonable.

Brad