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microsoft / XmlNotepad

XML Notepad provides a simple intuitive User Interface for browsing and editing XML documents.
https://microsoft.github.io/XmlNotepad/
MIT License
998 stars 207 forks source link

Disable All Reformatting? #425

Open muzicman82 opened 1 week ago

muzicman82 commented 1 week ago

Hello all,

I am trying to use this fantastic program to simply edit some values in an an XML formatted file that is a configuration backup for an AV device. Once I edit it, I can then import it to replace the current configuration.

The trouble I am having is it seems like some of the basic reformatting that happens is causing the import to fail. No details are given. If I use WinMerge to compare, here are some differences:

This: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> Becomes: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

This: <item name="ungrouped" sequence="1"/ > Becomes: <item name="ungrouped" sequence="1"/> (The space before the closing > is removed)

I don't know what is and isn't correctly formatted XML, but the point here is the device seems to be rejecting my edits based on things being autoformatted. All I want to do is open it, find text, replace text, and save.

Thanks!

lovettchris commented 1 week ago

This text is problematic:

<item name="ungrouped" sequence="1"/ >

The space between "/" and ">" is non-compliant according to the XML specification. I would recommend fixing this using a text editor like "Notepad" removing that space before you load the file into XML Notepad. XML Notepad should have failed to load this, unless you have a typo and perhaps the original file contains the space before the slash? This space after foo "" and no space "" is identical as far as the XML specification is concerned. Any application that rejects one of these is non-compliant. XML Notepad currently does not have a way to change this behavior.

Have you tried manually changing the lower case "utf-8" to upper case "UTF-8" and does this make your import work correctly? The XML specification says "XML processors SHOULD match character encoding names in a case-insensitive way".

muzicman82 commented 1 week ago

I'm still trying to get to the bottom of what the device accepts and doesn't accept, but I don't have any control over that device's firmware and I doubt the manufacturer will listen to me in terms of getting their XML files to be compliant. So, that being said, XML Notepad may not be best program to use to edit, or I'll have to do some tweaking after using it. It would be nice for a simple "retain existing formatting" setting where the program only modifies values inside of quotes.

muzicman82 commented 1 week ago

I think I figured things out. The XML Notepad file imports properly with only one change in Notepad++ -- converting it from UTF-8 BOM to UTF-8. None of the other formatting things mattered.

So, is there a way to set this in the program?

lovettchris commented 1 week ago

Excellent debugging, and yes you can turn on the "No byte order mark on save" option under Formatting Options in the Options dialog:

Image

muzicman82 commented 1 week ago

Perfect! Thanks.

I would love to see the program just format to the same as the source file automatically.

muzicman82 commented 1 week ago

So, I just tried that option, but I get the following error: Image

lovettchris commented 1 week ago

Doh, that's bad, working on a fix...

lovettchris commented 1 week ago

Fixed in https://github.com/microsoft/XmlNotepad/releases/tag/2.9.0.15

muzicman82 commented 1 week ago

Amazing! Thank you! This now works perfectly with no workarounds.

lovettchris commented 1 week ago

Awesome, glad to hear it, thanks for the bug replace, please close it if you are happy with this outcome. Cheers.