Canonical links don't show up in sitemap.xml

[skyynet]

I make use of canonical links on my website a lot and was happy to see that xml-sitemaps seem to support them.
Unfortunately it doesn't work or not like I thought it would.

For example on my site [ External links are visible to forum administrators only ] I have a database with more than 5000 mobile phones.
Each phone is linked this way: [ External links are visible to forum administrators only ]
The link is transformed into [ External links are visible to forum administrators only ] be mod rewrite.
On the page there is a canonical entry to [ External links are visible to forum administrators only ]
I was assuming that I will get the canonical entry into the XML file.
While the canonical entries are shown as being checked while crawling I have no entries in the resulting xml file. On the other hand I have multiple [ External links are visible to forum administrators only ] entries.

You may check my page on your own to see what I mean.

[XML-Sitemaps Support]

Hello,

canonical URL should not be redirected to other page, otherwise it won't get indexed.

[skyynet]

Why? Google does index canonical links which redirect to other pages.
Google for "skyynet/db/Nokia/6310i" and you'll find what I'm intending to get indexed.

[XML-Sitemaps Support]

Hello,

sitemap generator includes only links that return content with http code 200.

[skyynet]

I understand. Any chance to make that optional? As Google indexes the canonical links which return a 301 Moved permanently I don't see a reason for XML Sitemaps not to support this.

[XML-Sitemaps Support]

Hello,

you can add "db/" in "Add directly in sitemap" setting - in this case those pages will be indexed without fetching from server.

[skyynet]

db/ is not a real directory but only an indicator for mod rewrite to transform the url
[ External links are visible to forum administrators only ]
to
[ External links are visible to forum administrators only ]

what is the db/ entry supposed to improve?

I just think that the canonical feature is crippled by design when you don't support 301 Moved Permanently answers.
Why not allow this (optionally)?

Also the crawling process supports a maximum script run time which sounds good for shared hosters. Unfortunately the crawling is not continued by the script but has to be done by a browser add-on. This also has to be improved.

Right now these are the two points which force me to do the crawling manually instead of regular jobs.

[XML-Sitemaps Support]

Hello,

what is the db/ entry supposed to improve?

That would instruct generator to include those pages in sitemap directly.