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This is how toprettyxml looks in 3.1/2 which seems to meet the OP's need, I'll close in a few days time unless someone objects.
def toprettyxml(self, indent="\t", newl="\n", encoding=None):
 # indent = the indentation string to prepend, per level
 # newl = the newline string to append
 use_encoding = "utf-8" if encoding is None else encoding
 writer = codecs.getwriter(use_encoding)(io.BytesIO())
 if self.nodeType == Node.DOCUMENT_NODE:
 # Can pass encoding only to document, to put it into XML header
 self.writexml(writer, "", indent, newl, encoding)
 else:
 self.writexml(writer, "", indent, newl)
 if encoding is None:
 return writer.stream.getvalue().decode(use_encoding)
 else:
 return writer.stream.getvalue()