Trying to minimize the support pain, Daniel
diff --git a/doc/FAQ.html b/doc/FAQ.html
index 48217e6..a47314e 100644
--- a/doc/FAQ.html
+++ b/doc/FAQ.html
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
<html>
<head>
<title>Libxml Frequently Asked Questions</title>
- <meta name="GENERATOR" content="amaya V4.1">
+ <meta name="GENERATOR" content="amaya V5.0">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html">
</head>
@@ -43,8 +43,8 @@
<li><em>Can I embed libxml in a proprietary application ?</em>
<p>Yes. The W3C IPR allows you to also keep proprietary the changes you
made to libxml, but it would be graceful to provide back bugfixes and
- improvements as patches for possible incorporation in the main development
- tree</p>
+ improvements as patches for possible incorporation in the main
+ development tree</p>
</li>
</ol>
@@ -53,7 +53,8 @@
<li>Unless you are forced to because your application links with a Gnome
library requiring it, <strong><span style="background-color: #FF0000">Do
Not Use libxml1</span></strong>, use libxml2</li>
- <li><em>Where can I get libxml</em> ?
+ <li><em>Where can I get libxml</em>
+ ?
<p>The original distribution comes from <a
href="ftp://rpmfind.net/pub/libxml/">rpmfind.net</a> or <a
href="ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/libxml/">gnome.org</a></p>
@@ -64,16 +65,16 @@
</li>
<li><em>I see libxml and libxml2 releases, which one should I install ?</em>
<ul>
- <li>If you are not concerned by any existing backward compatibility with
- existing application, install libxml2 only</li>
+ <li>If you are not concerned by any existing backward compatibility
+ with existing application, install libxml2 only</li>
<li>If you are not doing development, you can safely install both.
usually the packages <a
href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml.html">libxml</a> and <a
href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2.html">libxml2</a> are
compatible (this is not the case for development packages)</li>
<li>If you are a developer and your system provides separate packaging
- for shared libraries and the development components, it is possible to
- install libxml and libxml2, and also <a
+ for shared libraries and the development components, it is possible
+ to install libxml and libxml2, and also <a
href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml-devel.html">libxml-devel</a>
and <a
href="http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/libxml2-devel.html">libxml2-devel</a>
@@ -122,13 +123,13 @@
<p>However if found at configuration time libxml will detect and use the
following libs:</p>
<ul>
- <li><a href="http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/zlib/">libz</a>: a
- highly portable and available widely compression library</li>
+ <li><a href="http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/zlib/">libz</a>
+ : a highly portable and available widely compression library</li>
<li>iconv: a powerful character encoding conversion library. It's
included by default on recent glibc libraries, so it doesn't need to
be installed specifically on linux. It seems it's now <a
- href="http://www.opennc.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xsh/iconv.html">part of
- the official UNIX</a> specification. Here is one <a
+ href="http://www.opennc.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xsh/iconv.html">part
+ of the official UNIX</a> specification. Here is one <a
href="http://clisp.cons.org/~haible/packages-libiconv.html">implementation
of the library</a> which source can be found <a
href="ftp://ftp.ilog.fr/pub/Users/haible/gnu/">here</a>.</li>
@@ -145,8 +146,8 @@
<li><em>make check fails on some platforms</em>
<p>Sometime the regression tests results don't completely match the value
produced by the parser, and the makefile uses diff to print the delta. On
- some platforms the diff return breaks the compilation process, if the diff
- is small this is probably not a serious problem</p>
+ some platforms the diff return breaks the compilation process, if the
+ diff is small this is probably not a serious problem</p>
</li>
<li><em>I use the CVS version and there is no configure script</em>
<p>The configure (and other Makefiles) are generated. Use the autogen.sh
@@ -162,6 +163,24 @@
<h2><a name="Developer">Developer</a> corner</h2>
<ol>
+ <li><em>xmlDocDump() generates output on one line</em>
+ <p>libxml will not <strong>invent</strong> spaces in the content of a
+ document since <strong>all spaces in the content of a document are
+ significant</strong>. If you build a tree from the API and want
+ indentation:</p>
+ <ol>
+ <li>the correct way is to generate those yourself too</li>
+ <li>the dangerous way is to ask libxml to add those blanks to your
+ content <strong>modifying the content of your document in the
+ process</strong>. The result may not be what you expect. There is
+ <strong>NO</strong> way to guarantee that such a modification won't
+ impact other part of the content of your document. See <a
+ href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-parser.html#XMLKEEPBLANKSDEFAULT">xmlKeepBlanksDefault
+ ()</a> and <a
+ href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-tree.html#XMLSAVEFORMATFILE">xmlSaveFormatFile
+ ()</a></li>
+ </ol>
+ </li>
<li>Extra nodes in the document:
<p><em>For a XML file as below:</em></p>
<pre><?xml version="1.0"?>
@@ -187,8 +206,8 @@
to forget. There is a function <a
href="http://xmlsoft.org/html/libxml-parser.html">xmlKeepBlanksDefault
()</a> to remove those at parse time, but that's an heuristic, and its
- use should be limited to case where you are sure there is no mixed-content
- in the document.</p>
+ use should be limited to case where you are sure there is no
+ mixed-content in the document.</p>
</li>
<li><em>I get compilation errors of existing code like when accessing
<strong>root</strong> or <strong>childs fields</strong> of nodes</em>
@@ -202,12 +221,12 @@
fields</em>
<p>The source code you are using has been <a
href="upgrade.html">upgraded</a> to be able to compile with both libxml
- and libxml2, but you need to install a more recent version: libxml(-devel)
- >= 1.8.8 or libxml2(-devel) >= 2.1.0</p>
+ and libxml2, but you need to install a more recent version:
+ libxml(-devel) >= 1.8.8 or libxml2(-devel) >= 2.1.0</p>
</li>
<li><em>XPath implementation looks seriously broken</em>
- <p>XPath implementation prior to 2.3.0 was really incomplete, upgrade to a
- recent version, the implementation and debug of libxslt generated fixes
+ <p>XPath implementation prior to 2.3.0 was really incomplete, upgrade to
+ a recent version, the implementation and debug of libxslt generated fixes
for most obvious problems.</p>
</li>
<li><em>The example provided in the web page does not compile</em>
@@ -233,13 +252,14 @@
</li>
<li><a
href="http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&dir=gnome-xml">Browse
- the libxml source</a>, I try to write code as clean and documented as
- possible, so looking at it may be helpful</li>
+ the libxml source</a>
+ , I try to write code as clean and documented as possible, so
+ looking at it may be helpful</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>What about C++ ?
- <p>libxml is written in pure C in order to allow easy reuse on a number of
- platforms, including embedded systems. I don't intend to convert to
+ <p>libxml is written in pure C in order to allow easy reuse on a number
+ of platforms, including embedded systems. I don't intend to convert to
C++.</p>
<p>There is however a C++ wrapper provided by Ari Johnson
<ari@btigate.com> which may fullfill your needs:</p>