avoid character encoding/escaping in sxml->xml or htmlprag's sxml->html

[Aleix Conchillo Flaqué]

Hi there,

I have a GuileScript example that it's basically a web server written in
Guile that returns a basic HTML and also a <script> with some code
generated with GuileScript. Something like this:

------------------------------------------------
(use-modules ((language guilescript compile) #:prefix gs:) ....)

(define js-fibonacci
  '(begin
     (define (fib n)
       (if (<= n 1)
           1
           (+ (fib (- n 2)) (fib (- n 1)))))

     (define (computeFibonacci)
       (let ((elem (js-invoke document 'getElementById "number"))
             (n (js-ref elem 'value)))
         (alert (+ "Fibonacci of " n " is " (fib n)))))

     (alert "Let's compute some fibonacci numbers!")))

(define js-script
  (receive (js _)
      (gs:compile js-fibonacci)
    js))

;;
;; This is the web page.
;;
(define (main-form request body)
  `(html
    (head (title "Fibonacci GuileScript Server")
          (script ,js-script))
    (body
     (input (@ (id "number") (type "text") (size "50") (value "")))
     (button (@ (type "button") (onclick "computeFibonacci()")) "Compute
Fibonacci"))))
------------------------------------------------

However, I'm not able to find a way to avoid character encoding/escaping
and the generated code inside <script> will always have "&lt;", etc. And
<script> is a place where encodings can be avoided. This is true for both
Guile and guile-lib's (htmlprag), even though htmlprag's escapes less
characters (e.g. double quotes).

One way I found to solve this was to have <script src="fib.js"> and then
have a handler for fib.js that would just return the transpiled string. But
it's not as nice, it's extra work and it's also an additional roundtrip to
the server.

Has anyone ran into this issue? Would is make sense to add a keyword
argument to (sxml->xml)? For example, (sxml->xml SXML PORT #:escape #f).

Best,

Aleix