[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Pretty XML

[Noah Huffman]

Laurel,

Notepad++ is a nice free editor that can "pretty-print" XML.

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

After you download Notepad++, you'll need to install the XML Tools plugin from the plugin manager menu.  You can have this up and running in 2-3 minutes.  You can also use Notepad++ to validate and transform XML.

-Noah

================
Noah Huffman
Archivist for Metadata and Encoding
David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Duke University



From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org [mailto:archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org] On Behalf Of Dougherty, Laurel
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2015 6:04 PM
To: 'archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org' <archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org>
Subject: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Pretty XML

All,

One of the little quirks we're looking to work around with ASpace is the fact that EAD XML downloads aren't "pretty." The container list is a sold mass of tabs and text. We occasionally need to take a look at our XML container lists to trouble-shoot or add small customizations, and it's hard to do.

We know we can:

1)      Run a tidy app (but that doubles the visual length of our finding aids, adding white space between every line, and again, is "one more thing to do" after export

2)      Our tech guru, Matt, has developed a simple Powershell prettify script, but since only his computer can run it, every time someone needed to look at their XML we'd have to ask him to run it (or, he'd have to keep his computer on all the time with a setting to scan our export file location, which again seems very dependent on him and his computer)

3)      I know I can get things to display readably in oXygen, but our preferred editor is Komodo, and oXygen costs money-right now we would need a minimum of 3 licenses for the staff members that would need it at their workstations.

Has anyone thought up a seamless workaround (or a better tidy command)? Or, a second question, why doesn't ASpace just export readable XML files that look like the ones that AT exported? I've searched in JIRA and it looks like this hasn't been brought up before. Am I missing something obvious?

Many thanks for any input!
Laurel

Laurel McPhee Dougherty
Supervisory Archivist, Special Collections & Archives Program
UC San Diego Library | * 858-534-5619 | * l1dougherty at ucsd.edu<mailto:l1dougherty at ucsd.edu>



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