[TxMt] Converting dense XML to easy-to-read form?

Eric O'Brien ericob at possibilityengine.com
Fri Dec 28 04:46:46 UTC 2007


I am not *writing* XML files, but I often want to understand one --  
either just for education or because I need to modify it.

Often the file in question was automatically generated and "ease of  
reading by humans" was not part of the process.

Right now, I trying to pull apart a XML file where a single element  
contains about 90 attributes.  Thankfully, they *do* seem to be  
ordered alphabetically, but they are all run together in a single  
line.  That is, there are no linefeeds between attributes.  Which  
would be just what I'd like (for readability anyway -- I'm hoping  
that "white space is white space and it won't matter whether those  
white-spaces are space characters or line feeds).

For this file, using Find and Replace seems to work.  (Find  
<doublequote><space> replace with <doublequote><newline>).  I don't  
know enough about XML to know if it always going to be as easy as that.

The XML bundle item "Tidy" actually runs xmllint, but I don't see a  
way to make that do what I want.

Searching Google on "XML pretty print" I came up with a number of  
hits, but many bits of code were from the year 2000 or so.

Does anyone know of any... contemporary solutions?  Or have other  
suggestions/ideas?

Thanks!

eo







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