Furnace with hopper not giving XP

could be a feature? you only get xp from doing things by hand? (mining, breeding, fishing, killing, cooking)

I'd point out that by denying this source of XP, it makes later gameplay more tedious – keeping multiple enchanted items in good repair is costly.
The simplest solution would probably be to enable the furnace to store XP from smelting-- rather than give XP at the time the player removes items from the furnace's output slot, XP would be accumulated in the furnace's own pool as each item is cooked. The XP could be dispensed whenever the furnace is opened (to whichever player opens it), or spilled out if the furnace is broken.

As the furnace is currently set up, the XP is given when taking finished products out of it. With a hopper, it is impossible to credit someone with the XP because no one has specifically taken out the product.

But why doesn't the XP drop on the ground like it does when a player pulls the items out? It doesn't actually give the XP directly to a player, it just spawns it, like when you kill a monster or mine coal. I doubt that it's actually "Works As Intended" that it doesn't generate XP when removed by a hopper, but it is possible. Seems more like it's just related to all the other hopper bugs at the moment.

maybe if items were given a special nbt tag (maybe called "smelted" or "xpgive") that indicates whether it will give experience to the player. When the hopper takes the item out, the tag's value would be 1, but would change to 0 and give the player experience when removed from any storage by a player.

Confirmed fixed. Furnaces store the XP when a hopper pulls out the smelted items and give it to the player when the next smelted item is taken out manually.

Is this intentionally being fixed or accidentially?

@kumasasa
I think that it happened by MC-126111 being fixed in 18w09a.

if you break the furnace, it used to give the xp. now it no longer does for some reason.

It never did give xp when breaking.