Verbose XML output

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[Originally posted by theowoll on 2009-02-20 19:13:27-08]

I felt like studying the structure of some PDF file and hoped for a moment I could get an XML version of the detailed ASCII tree generated by 'exiftool -verbose1'. But soon I learned that '-verbose1' suppresses normal console output, which would be XML when using '-xmlFormat'. So I decided to inform you, the author of this fine piece of software, that there is someone who believes it could be pretty cool to have both verbose output and XML formatting (just for the case that you ever run out of ideas how to enhance this program). It just would be convenient to collapse nodes of the tree using for instance an XML editor, though I have to admit it isn't urgent for me.

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[Originally posted by exiftool on 2009-02-20 20:43:28-08]

Interesting idea, but I'm afraid this is very painful given the
current implementation because the verbose output is
implemented at a very low level.  To implement the
verbose html output (-htmldump), was likewise painful,
but worth the effort in this case because I needed a good
visualization tool for Exif information for my own purposes.

- Phil

[Archive]

[Originally posted by theowoll on 2009-02-21 16:56:16-08]

In the meantime I found out, that http://ccxvii.net/fitz/" target="_blank">MuPDF does a similar job. With  mupdftool draw -x file.pdf

 it apparently tries to generate XML formatted information about visible elements like images, text and drawings. The output is good enough for http://www.kate-editor.org/kwrite" target="_blank">KWrite, which uses code folding to collapse nodes of an XML tree. I also realized that collapsing all nodes by something like  exiftool -verbose1 file.pdf | egrep '(PDF dictionary|[:alnum:]* directory) with [0-9]* entries'

 can already make the structure of the document clearer.