NAME

SYNOPSIS

xml-format filename

DESCRIPTION

As with all file beautifiers, its primary purpose is to take a document created by someone with a perplexing lack of self-discipline and aesthetic sensibility and make it readable.

The XML file is modified in place, and the original document is saved to filename.bak, in case you don't like the results.

Since XML is a class of markup languages, not a markup language, the type of each tag encountered is determined from the type of XML file (DocBook, XHTML, etc.), which, in turn, is inferred from the filename extension (".dbk" for DocBook, ".xhtml" for XHTML, etc.)

There are four types of tags:

Block tags denote blocks of content that should be visually separated from others in the XML source, and often require multiple lines, such as paragraphs, captions, and programlistings. Blocks are separated from other content by a blank line. Content within a block is indented the same as the block tags.

    <para>
    The large forest planet Oglaroon is home to the Oglaroonians,
    an "intelligent" species who maintain an entire civilisation,
    including some extremely small wars, in one small nut tree,
    believing it to be the entire universe, and other trees to be
    merely Oglanut-induced illusions.
    </para>

Line tags denote small but important content items that should be highlighted, but not necessarily use multiple lines, such as titles and index terms. xml-format attempts to keep line tag items to a single, separate line line.

    <title>So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish</title>

Sectioning tags denote structural components of a document, such as chapters, sections, figures, and lists. Opening and closing sectioning tags are placed alone on separate lines. Content between sectioning tags is indented one more level beyond the tags themselves.

<chapter>
    <title>Construction of Earth</title>
    
    <para>
    For a time in the distant past, fjords were fashionable...
    </para>
</chapter>

All other tags that do not fall into the first three categories are considered in-line, and are treated essentially as text, except that they are nestled against the text they surround.

    People were described as daring <emphasis>to boldly split
    infinitives that no man had split before</emphasis>. However,

The type of each tag is determined from simple text files containing lists of each tag name, on per line, in DATADIR/Config/language/<type>-tags.txt.

For example, the tags for DocBook XML are found in:

DATADIR/Config/dbk/block-tags.txt
DATADIR/Config/dbk/line-tags.txt
DATADIR/Config/dbk/sectioning-tags.txt

FILES

DATADIR/Config/*/*.txt

SEE ALSO

BUGS

AUTHOR

Jason W. Bacon