diff --git a/lib/action.php b/lib/action.php
index 8694bf47c0..4aff4264d9 100644
--- a/lib/action.php
+++ b/lib/action.php
@@ -58,8 +58,21 @@ class Action extends HTMLOutputter // lawsuit
 {
     var $args;
 
-    function Action()
+    /**
+     * Constructor
+     *
+     * Just wraps the HTMLOutputter constructor.
+     *
+     * @param string  $output URI to output to, default = stdout
+     * @param boolean $indent Whether to indent output, default true
+     *
+     * @see XMLOutputter::__construct
+     * @see HTMLOutputter::__construct
+     */
+
+    function __construct($output='php://output', $indent=true)
     {
+        parent::__construct($output, $indent);
     }
 
     // For initializing members of the class
diff --git a/lib/htmloutputter.php b/lib/htmloutputter.php
index 43e4a59a98..75a995bef1 100644
--- a/lib/htmloutputter.php
+++ b/lib/htmloutputter.php
@@ -122,7 +122,6 @@ class HTMLOutputter extends XMLOutputter
                                           'lang' => $language));
     }
 
-
     /**
     *  Ends an HTML document
     *
@@ -134,7 +133,6 @@ class HTMLOutputter extends XMLOutputter
         $this->endXML();
     }
 
-
     /**
      * Output an HTML text input element
      *
diff --git a/lib/xmloutputter.php b/lib/xmloutputter.php
index 9ca0c91bd6..64935da408 100644
--- a/lib/xmloutputter.php
+++ b/lib/xmloutputter.php
@@ -72,7 +72,6 @@ class XMLOutputter
         $this->xw = new XMLWriter();
         $this->xw->openURI($output);
         $this->xw->setIndent($indent);
-        $this->xw->startDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');
     }
 
     /**
@@ -87,6 +86,7 @@ class XMLOutputter
 
     function startXML($doc=null, $public=null, $system=null)
     {
+        $this->xw->startDocument('1.0', 'UTF-8');
         if ($doc) {
             $this->xw->writeDTD($doc, $public, $system);
         }