Can you style XMLwith CSS to display tag attributes?

[BrowserUk]

I have a large XML file containing programming api information. Reading it is a pain.

But it is pure XML (not HTML) and thus contains no styling, so I had the notion that if I applied a little styling I could view it in my browser instead of my editor and the <TAG>s would disappear, making it easier to read. The problem is, that much of the salient information is details in tag attributes; and that disappears with the tags once styled. Is there a solution to this that doesn't involve reformatting the whole XML document?

An example of the XML:

<intrinsic tech='MMX' rettype='__m64' name='_m_from_int64'>
    <type>Integer</type>
    <CPUID>MMX</CPUID>
    <category>Convert</category>
    <parameter varname='a' type='__int64'/>
    <description>Copy 64-bit integer "a" to "dst".</description>
    <operation>
dst[63:0] := a[63:0]
    </operation>
    <instruction name='movq' form='mm, r64'/>
    <header>mmintrin.h</header>
</intrinsic>

Specifically, is there any way to style that so that the rettype and name fields are displayed?

[Anonymous Monk]

It's possible since CSS2, although in the long run you'd probably be happier with XSLT or a manual transform, e.g. XML::Twig.

* { display: block; }
type:before { content: "Type: " }
CPUID:before { content: "CPUID: " }
/* etc */
intrinsic:before { content: "intrinsic name="
    attr(name) ", rettype=" attr(rettype) }

[BrowserUk]

That works perfectly for my purpose. Thank you.

although in the long run you'd probably be happier with XSLT or a manual transform, e.g. XML::Twig.

Not so much. The source (from the Intel website) seems to change pretty regularly -- the current version was update 26th May, 2015 -- so I'd rather just have a local style sheet that will allow me to read it once I download it, rather than have to go through a bunch of manipulations each time it changes.

I'm not trying to make it pretty; just readable; and only for me.

[CountZero]

That can all bhe automated: one Perl script to download the file at regular intervals; transform it through XSLT and save it on your hard-disk as HTML: ready for you to double-click it and read it in your browser.

[RichardK]

You can add a stylesheet directive to an xml file, see http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-stylesheet/ or google around for some tutorials.

It works for me when opening the file in firefox, the top of your xml then looks like this :-

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="view.css"?>
...

[BrowserUk]

That just dumps the content (minus tags including attributes) to the screen as a big unstructured mess? Not at all what I sought.

[RichardK]

Well, you can get very creative with your css definition, but if that's not doing it for you then there's always XSLT -- good luck with that :)