note 89957 added to function.xmlwriter-start-document

I was having a very hard time triyng to use: $writer->startDocument( '1.0' , 'Windows-1252' ); Somehow this caused the generation of an empty xml file, and I could not figure out why. When all other efforts failed I asked for help to the team that developed the XMLwriter extension, and got a very quick reply as follows: Quote: ============================== Windows-1252 support is only available if libxml2 is link with iconv support (it usually is, but there are exceptions). I know on my Mac, the built in libxml2 doesnt provide iconv support - they go with some Unicode hack which doesnt provide it, so I had to build my own. It is built by default (and your code works) on my linux machines. It is possible to create the XML without a declaration, which means you could add it manually, but if you use any characters that are differnt between UTF-8 and Windows-1252, the encoding would be wrong in the document, so do not recommend. ============================== Then light was made on my head: I am using a linux server distribution that by default is still running PHP 4.3. A few months ago I decided to force the upgrade of PHP to the newest version 5.1.6 at that time, and that has brougth me the XMLwriter extension that I am now using. But clearly there are compatibility issues betwen the rest of the server's defaults and PHP 5 wich is probably why it's development team has not upgraded yet. Let's hope all the remaining environments catch up with this extension. It is in fact most handy. And in the meantime, I have figured out a (not recomended, obviously) workaroud that works for me: Instead of using two parameters, I used only the first one: $writer->startDocument( '1.0" encoding="Windows-1252' ); this will output: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?> ---- Server IP: 194.8.30.16 Probable Submitter: 213.228.164.8 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.xmlwriter-start-document.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/89957 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/89957/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/89957/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/89957/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/89957/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/89957/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/89957/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/89957 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/89957 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php