computeroutput vs screen vs xmllint

[Mathieu Malaterre <mathieu.malaterre@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

  We are internally using different docbook editors (vi, emacs, serna
and xmlmind). To some extent, we would like to preserve a nice and
clear history of revision of our XML files in SVN (subversion). For
this we use a script based on xmllint --format to reformat to a unique
presentation. This has work quite well until today. Could someone
please let me know if the following situation is an issue with either
XML or docbook itself:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd";>
<article>
  <section>
    <title>Introduction</title>
    <para>Before</para>
    <screen><computeroutput>a.txt
b.txt
</computeroutput>
</screen>
    <para>After</para>
  </section>
</article>

while xmllint --format prefers:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd";>
<article>
  <section>
    <title>Introduction</title>
    <para>Before</para>
    <screen>
      <computeroutput>a.txt
b.txt
</computeroutput>
    </screen>
    <para>After</para>
  </section>
</article>

This leads to differences in the fo output with extra spaces. So how
does one handles such corner cases ?

Thanks much !
-- 
Mathieu