InfoPath Dev

Hi,

I've got a form template that I would like to output indented xml on a Save. During the transition to Infopath, users may need to hand-edit their xml as they have in the past, or diff versions of it using a line-by-line differ.

I've seen this question asked a time or two. I don't think I've seen a straight answer yet, though.

I realize this could probably be done with a xsl transform after saving, but I would rather not have to manage that extra step if I can avoid it.

regards,

Joe

I think the easiest way to do this would be to have your users download Altova's XMLSpy. This utility has a nice little "Pretty Print" button that automatically turns sloppy XML into nicely indented, pretty XML! I use it all the time.

I'm sure it can be done with XSL or something similiar, but if you're editing XML by hand, you might as well use XMLSpy anyway! A link to this utility can be found in the Power Tools section in the left side bar of this website.

Hi Joe and welcome to our forum,
In general, allowing hand editing is not a good idea since it's quite easy to invalide the XML schema and cause the form not to open in InfoPath. Why not just use Office Forms Server (in beta) to edit the forms for now?

Sounds like there's no way to get InfoPath to do this. Thanks for the alternatives. I agree, they sound like they would work.

The hand-editing probably will not go on long, once the form matures. I'm a bit more concerned about breaking "diff". (i.e. if Infopath decides to save everything on line 1, diff will not be very useful).

I may have to move our users to an XML differ (i.e. node by node instead of line by line) to get around this. That's something I was hoping to do eventually anyway -- this may just bump up the priority of it.

thanks,

Joe