[webkit-dev] XML Serialization Issues

[Dean Jackson]

I believe the tests you added are not reliable across runs. In particular, the unique id you generate
isn’t necessarily always the same, but your -expected.txt is just a dump of the DOM.

I filed: http://webkit.org/b/120490, but I only mentioned one test. Since then I’ve seen more fail.

Dean

On 30 Aug 2013, at 3:25 am, Rob Buis <rwlbuis at gmail.com> wrote:

> Fixed.
> 
> More seriously, all bugs mentioned below are fixed/closed, please open
> new ones for any regressions/improvements.
> Cheers,
> 
> Rob.
> 
> On 19 June 2013 14:44, Alex Milowski <alex at milowski.com> wrote:
>> I was working on using MathJax [1] to turn MathML into SVG and ran into some
>> serious serialization issues.  In summary, as MathJax programmatically
>> creates SVG renderings of the MathML, when it creates XLink attributes, it
>> doesn't seem to define a prefix.  While this works for rendering, it does
>> when you try to extract a serialization of the SVG.
>> 
>> That is, MathJax creates SVG 'use' elements like (assuming SVG as the
>> default namespace):
>> 
>> <use xlink:href="#MJMATHI-78" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
>> 
>> but instead I get:
>> 
>> <use href="#MJMATHI-78" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
>> 
>> which makes the SVG incorrect as the 'use' element is now in the xlink
>> namespace.
>> 
>> You can work around this by manually setting the "prefix" property on each
>> xlink:href attribute.
>> 
>> Looking into why this happens, I can see that the serializer seriously
>> broken in a number of ways when the DOM is constructed with incomplete (e.g.
>> missing namespace declarations) or inconsistent information (e.g. same
>> prefix used for different namespaces in the same context).
>> 
>> I found at least 6 bugs outstanding (#16739 [2], #16496 [3], #19121 [4],
>> #22958 [5], #83056 [6], #106531 [7]) and filed a new one (#117764 [8]).
>> Some of these date back to 2007 (6 years ago!).
>> 
>> These bugs break down to these categories:
>> 
>> 1. Default namespace issues: #16739, #106531, #16496
>> 2. Conflicting prefix mappings: #117764, #19121
>> 3. Namespace attribute issues: #22958, #83056, #117764
>> 
>> In looking at the code (MarkupAccumulator.cpp), they all suffer from one of
>> two problems:
>> 
>> 1. The computed prefix used isn't properly used for the declaration.
>> 
>> 2. The generated namespace mappings aren't properly stored, scoped, or dealt
>> with when they are inconsistent.
>> 
>> There is an general assumption in the code that certain prefixes should
>> always be used for certain namespaces.  Unfortunately, it does so without
>> looking to see whether there is a conflict already in scope.  Also, when the
>> namespace is not recognized and there is no prefix, a prefix needs to be
>> generated for the serialization.
>> 
>> Having written several robust XML Serializers for other projects, this can
>> all be fixed in a straightforward way.  I've looked at the code and know
>> what should be done.  The changes are probably modest.
>> 
>> Unfortunately, I can't spend the time to directly write and test the code
>> till probably after November.  :(
>> 
>> I am certainly willing to help, explain my strategy, advise, test, etc. if
>> there was another willing developer out there who would like to see these
>> bugs closed.
>> 
>> [1] http://www.mathjax.org/
>> [2] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16739
>> [3] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16496
>> [4] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19121
>> [5] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22958
>> [6] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83056
>> [7] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106531
>> [8] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117764
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> --Alex Milowski
>> "The excellence of grammar as a guide is proportional to the paucity of the
>> inflexions, i.e. to the degree of analysis effected by the language
>> considered."
>> 
>> Bertrand Russell in a footnote of Principles of Mathematics
>> 
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