xml files on a mac

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glamrockchick

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text edit opens it but it is all jumbled up and i can't read it properly.. any tips so it can be more readable? its a conversation
 
What application created that file?
If you don't know for sure - where did you get the file?

If you downloaded the file from another internet site, are there any recommendations on that site for viewing the file?
 
Can MS Word open that file properly?

Windows? on your Mac? or from a Windows PC?
Can you open it in Windows, with notepad?
 
glamrockchick said:
text edit opens it but it is all jumbled up and i can't read it properly.. any tips so it can be more readable? its a conversation
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It is unclear what you mean by "jumbled up," but XML files are plain text and should open without issue in Text Edit, any other text editor, or Xcode. My guess is that the file looks jumbled because you don't recognize standard XML tags in your files. Make sure that your document windows are wide enough so that no source line has to break across two lines. If you have a minimal level of understanding of computer code, then the text may look more familiar.
 
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@glamrockbitch:
You've still got a serious problem with stating your problems comprehensively.
When you state a problem, please give as much information as you can:
  • the programs you are using
  • where you've got the file from
  • what are the problems with the file - give an example
  • what have you tried that worked, didn't work
If you don't state as much information as you have up front you'll seriously risk that people in here won't answer you questions as it way too much work to get a proper understanding of your problems. We'ld rather have more information than needed than less - as you are doing.

Also : give feedback
  • did the solutions work for you
  • what was helpful and what not
  • thanking people for their help is very much appreciated
  • give some indication that you've read the answers and whether you'll try any of the suggestions - eg I'm awating feedback on my previous help to you.
If you don't give feedback - people will stop helping you.
 
nope doesn't seem to open on word and yep was from windows and i transferred it onto my mac because having problems with windows pc.. jumbled up as in: in text edit it comes out like this: <?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type='text/xsl' href='MessageLog.xsl'?>
<Log FirstSessionID="1" LastSessionID="4"><Message Date="10/09/2011" Time="18:19:08" DateTime="2011-09-10T17:19:08.999Z" SessionID="1"><From><User FriendlyName="Martin"/></From><To><User FriendlyName="PrInCeSs DoRiT-SaMaNtHa :)"/></To><Text Style="font-family:Segoe UI; color:#ff00ff; ">have u sent any txts today? none thru yrt</Text></Message><Message Date="10/09/2011" Time="18:19:29" DateTime="2011-09-10T17:19:29.319Z" SessionID="1"><From><User FriendlyName="PrInCeSs DoRiT-SaMaNtHa :)"/></From><To><User FriendlyName="Martin"/></To><Text Style="font-family:Segoe UI; color:#000000; ">im an


hardly readable like that.. tried to open it with all the things i could think of ..
 
Here's my experience with trying to do something with .xml extension, though it may be a short experience, I wasted a lot of hours trying to use an exported .xml file format from one application and importing it into another. The .xml file is a raw data file and just that. A careful choice of a receiving application to import the .xml will import the raw data .xml file format but doesn't know how to put the raw data into nice tables and graphs. Usually a "in between application" needs to to that for you with a need to ask a programmer to help you with the finioshed product. Also, Microsoft basically abandoned the .xml several years ago and is becoming less supported in both Mac and Windows worlds. I would try to stay away from the .xml file format.
 
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M$ has a long history of embrace - extend - own in their relationship with the standards. So too with XML. Eg. in IE6 M$ introduced support for IE6 to be able to handle raw XML files. But they implemented a draft version of the XML standard and never updated it to the final version, thus leading to severe compatibility problems between the browsers, as everybody else implemented the final version of the XML standard.

I'm guessing, that M$ has implemented some bastard version of XML in MSN. Most programs will expect the input to follow the standard & can't handle bastard versions.

The only program, I can think of, that might be able to handle M$ XML, is BBEdit. You can download a trial version from barebones. Under
  • menu::Markup -> Tidy
  • menu::Markup -> Utilities -> Format ...
you've got several options you can experiment with. You can always undo and return to the original, if an experiment doesn't give you a good result.

When you've got a proper reflow of the document, you might want to use some search & replace commands to compact the document to bring several lines together.
 
midijeep said:
Here's my experience with trying to do something with .xml extension, though it may be a short experience, I wasted a lot of hours trying to use an exported .xml file format from one application and importing it into another. The .xml file is a raw data file and just that. A careful choice of a receiving application to import the .xml will import the raw data .xml file format but doesn't know how to put the raw data into nice tables and graphs. Usually a "in between application" needs to to that for you with a need to ask a programmer to help you with the finioshed product. Also, Microsoft basically abandoned the .xml several years ago and is becoming less supported in both Mac and Windows worlds. I would try to stay away from the .xml file format.
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No, XML is the exact opposite of raw data. Data and the script to display it can be embedded within an XML file.

glamrockchick said:
nope doesn't seem to open on word and yep was from windows and i transferred it onto my mac because having problems with windows pc.. jumbled up as in: in text edit it comes out like this: <?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type='text/xsl' href='MessageLog.xsl'?>
<Log FirstSessionID="1" LastSessionID="4"><Message Date="10/09/2011" Time="18:19:08" DateTime="2011-09-10T17:19:08.999Z" SessionID="1"><From><User FriendlyName="Martin"/></From><To><User FriendlyName="PrInCeSs DoRiT-SaMaNtHa :)"/></To><Text Style="font-family:Segoe UI; color:#ff00ff; ">have u sent any txts today? none thru yrt</Text></Message><Message Date="10/09/2011" Time="18:19:29" DateTime="2011-09-10T17:19:29.319Z" SessionID="1"><From><User FriendlyName="PrInCeSs DoRiT-SaMaNtHa :)"/></From><To><User FriendlyName="Martin"/></To><Text Style="font-family:Segoe UI; color:#000000; ">im an


hardly readable like that.. tried to open it with all the things i could think of ..
Click to expand...
As described in my earlier post and as explicitly stated by BjarneDM, this appears to be a text flow issue. XML is a markup language. It looks very much like HTML. Based on the snippet of code that you posted, there is no evidence that there is anything wrong with your XML file. It appears that you are trying to flow the text of the file into a narrow application window. I do not see any Microsoft issues in your posted snippet.

I assume that your MSN conversation was not confidential because it was an Internet chat in the open. If you attach the XML file or post the complete text, then many members of this forum can strip the XML code leaving the transcript of the conversations that you want to preserve. Having people tell you how bad Microsoft is may true but will not solve your problem.
 
MisterMe said:
No, XML is the exact opposite of raw data. Data and the script to display it can be embedded within an XML file.
Click to expand...

xml is raw data. By your comment - "Data and the script to display it can be embedded within an XML file" and thus the raw data needs processed.
It is raw data to APIs. If something needs processed, by definition it is given in a raw form as I stated. As you stated the data needs to be embedded, again from a raw form.
 
I agree with midijeep - XML is raw data.

The purpose of XML, HTML and SGML is to function as meta-formats that describe the data. You''ll always want to do something with this data on the receiving end. All of these formats are in clear-text and thus human-readable. You can actually print it out, send it by snail-mail, and then type it in on the receiving end.

Now, in OOXML M$ bastardized this principle by allowing pure binary data in a proprietary format to be embedded in the format. Actually, Apple in some of their .plist files also embeds binary data, but Apple encodes the data in BASE64 thus following the rules.

As to the formatting problem: formatting - that's only to make it more human-readable. White-space present between an end-tag and a start-tag is by definition ignored by the interpreters, so having the whole of the XML data as one long string of text without any line-breaks is actually completely OK !

I've had practical experience with HTML, CSS, Ajax, XML & XSLT in one of my web-project where an XMLHTTPRequest from the browser resulted in data from a MySQL database being transformed into XML which was sent back to the browser. In the browser, an XSLT-stylesheet was applied to the raw XML transforming it into HTML. The HTML was then inserted into the web-page and CSS applied to it.

The characteristics of XML are:
  • it's a data exchange format
  • it's in clear text
  • it's human readable
  • it fills way more than binary data
One of the best book I've read about XML is Learning XML, 2nd Edition

SVG is actually an XML-dialect.
 
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BjarneDM said:
I agree with midijeep - XML is raw data.

The purpose of XML, HTML and SGML is to function as meta-formats that describe the data. ...
Click to expand...
You contradict yourself. Raw data are raw. No additional formatting other than formatting from the source. No added metaformats. No added mark-up tags. No additional processing. No scripts to perform processing. No added descriptions. No added anything.
 
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