XML was based on SGML, which was originally intended for marking up text documents, so TEXT was given a special place in the Pantheon of Nodes, even above Attributes.

So using XML to represent data structures instead of marking up text can be pretty awkward, inefficient, and nuanced.

XML Attributes are second class citizens compared to TEXT nodes which can contain CDATA, because attributes undergo "Attribute-Value Normalization" -- having their line breaks, entity references, and white space normalized. Newlines are normalized, leading and trailing white space removed, repeating white space replaced with a single space.

SVG path attributes (as well as simple values like numbers, booleans, enums, etc) are impervious to Attribute Value Normalization corruption, because they don't depend on white space being perfectly preserved (by design, of course), so they are fine to put in attributes.

But if you really care about preserving the exact value of a string, like a password or arbitrary string, you should use <!CDATA[[ ]]> in a text node, not an attribute!

I Wanna Be <![CDATA[
https://donhopkins.medium.com/twenty-twenty-twenty-four-esca...
]]>

https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/#AVNormalize

3.3.3 Attribute-Value Normalization

Before the value of an attribute is passed to the application or checked for validity, the XML processor must normalize the attribute value by applying the algorithm below, or by using some other method such that the value passed to the application is the same as that produced by the algorithm.

All line breaks must have been normalized on input to #xA as described in 2.11 End-of-Line Handling, so the rest of this algorithm operates on text normalized in this way.

Begin with a normalized value consisting of the empty string.

For each character, entity reference, or character reference in the unnormalized attribute value, beginning with the first and continuing to the last, do the following:

For a character reference, append the referenced character to the normalized value.

For an entity reference, recursively apply step 3 of this algorithm to the replacement text of the entity.

For a white space character (#x20, #xD, #xA, #x9), append a space character (#x20) to the normalized value.

For another character, append the character to the normalized value.

If the attribute type is not CDATA, then the XML processor must further process the normalized attribute value by discarding any leading and trailing space (#x20) characters, and by replacing sequences of space (#x20) characters by a single space (#x20) character.

Note that if the unnormalized attribute value contains a character reference to a white space character other than space (#x20), the normalized value contains the referenced character itself (#xD, #xA or #x9). This contrasts with the case where the unnormalized value contains a white space character (not a reference), which is replaced with a space character (#x20) in the normalized value and also contrasts with the case where the unnormalized value contains an entity reference whose replacement text contains a white space character; being recursively processed, the white space character is replaced with a space character (#x20) in the normalized value.

All attributes for which no declaration has been read should be treated by a non-validating processor as if declared CDATA.

It is an error if an attribute value contains a reference to an entity for which no declaration has been read.