code-style cleanup for xml files

• Key: FOR-644
• Type: Task
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: David Crossley
• Component/s: Other
• Affects Version/s: 0.8, 0.9-dev
• Fix Version/s: 0.9-dev

Description

We have much inconsistent whitespace in all of our files. This is known to cause trouble in a collaborative environment. See discussion at: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=112450901100001 and http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=112495618800002 and various linked discussions.

Comments

[David Crossley]

Added Perl script etc/tidy-xml.pl and config file to find all xml files and run tidy.sf.net

Test it on etc/test-whitespace/

Not sure if we should add parameter "char-encoding: utf8" to etc/tidy-config.txt file. See the effect that it has on entities in the main test document etc/test-whitespace/test-1.xml

[David Crossley]

Scheduling for 0.8 release. We should try this. During the code-freeze for 0.8 release would be a good time, as everybody should have worked their changes into the code by then.

IIRC "tidy" removed the whitespace following an anchor element. If not fixed then we need to post-process the files with that perl script. Need to do the tests again beforehand.

[David Crossley]

I tried the current CVS of tidy.sf.net and it seems that that issue is still present.

[David Crossley]

Last week i have been testing "xmlformat" which concentrates specifically on the formatting task. Its is nice. This week i will compare results.

http://www.kitebird.com/software/xmlformat/

[David Crossley]

Didn't get around to comparing. Going with xmlformat. I will start processing some of the more obscure areas of our trunk because less likely that people will be still working there. This gets some of the job done early, and the rest will be done just after the code freeze starts.

[David Crossley]

This is great. I tried it on our dtdx plugin, then published our website again. This revealed an issue with xsl stylesheets formatting which collapsed the single space in an <xsl:text> element. xmlformat.conf to the rescue.

So i am going to do similar tests with some of our other more obscure plugins.

Another warning:

If developers do not get their trunk changes contributed/committed, then i expect that you are going to need to move your changed files out of the way before doing 'svn update' after the code-freeze.

In such a case, there is an option for you. Install xmlformat and run our Ant target over your own working copy (thus using the same xmlformat.conf) then check with diff. See main/build.xml r526505.

[David Crossley]

Done the whole of trunk for 0.8 release. Moving this issue over to 0.9