[xml/sgml-pkgs] Bug#867378: libxml2-utils: xmllint option --postvalid reports valid documents as invalid

[Andreas Hoenen]

Package: libxml2-utils
Version: 2.9.4+dfsg1-2.2
Severity: normal

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Dear Maintainer,

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With option --postvalid xmllint chokes non ascii characters in attribute
values. The attached example demonstrates this misbehaviour: although it is a
valid docbook document, it is erroneously reported as invalid:

$ xmllint --xinclude --postvalid main.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN" "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd">
<article lang="en">
  <title>xmllint postvalidation test</title>
  <para id="foo&#xDF;">
  xmllint hat problems with post validation of XML attributes values containing
  non ascii characters.
</para>
</article>
include.xml:5: element para: validity error : Syntax of value for attribute id of para is not valid
Document main.xml does not validate

$ echo $?
3


A workaround shows that the --valid option behaves correctly:

$ xmllint --xinclude --output - main.xml | xmllint --valid -
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN" "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd">
<article lang="en">
  <title>xmllint postvalidation test</title>
  <para id="foo&#xDF;">
  xmllint hat problems with post validation of XML attributes values containing
  non ascii characters.
</para>
</article>

$ echo $?
0

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages libxml2-utils depends on:
ii  libc6    2.24-11+deb9u1
ii  libxml2  2.9.4+dfsg1-2.2

libxml2-utils recommends no packages.

libxml2-utils suggests no packages.

- -- no debconf information

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-------------- next part --------------
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE para
          PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
                 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd">
<para id="foo?">
  xmllint hat problems with post validation of XML attributes values containing
  non ascii characters.
</para>
-------------- next part --------------
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE article
          PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
                 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd">
<article lang="en">
  <title>xmllint postvalidation test</title>
  <xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" href="include.xml"/>
</article>