How to display XML source code using HTML with Emacs?

Question

In the HTML file, I need to show some XML code. The problem is that I can't use

<pre>..</pre> 

to show '<' and '>'.

What would be the solution for this problem?

ADDED

From the answer, replacing '<' and '>' to < and> can be a solution. I'm an Emacs user, are there Emacs tools/magic to do that automatically? I mean, I can use search and replace, but I expect Emacs can do it by 'select region' -> 'M-x replace_xml' or something.

Answer 1

You need to replace < by < and > by >. How to do this depends on the server side language in question.

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Update: as per your update: this is not programming related anymore. I think http://superuser.com is a better place to ask software related questions.

Answer 2

If you can use replacement routines (in a server side language or with javascript) then you should replace all ampersangs (& - with &) and less than signs (< with <) and optionally greater than signs (> with >).

Alternatively you can wrap the xml in escaped markup (start: <![CDATA[ end: ]]>) - but this isn't much different from using <pre>...</pre>

Answer 3

As already mentioned, you need to escape the XML. For robustness I would also escape single and double quotes too. Note that CDATA and <pre> can cause you problems if, for any reason, your XML document includes ]]> or </pre> in it.

You can get away with doing a straight string substitution for the escaping, but if you do, make sure you escape & to & before doing any of the other escapes.

Answer 4

You need to escape < as < and & as &. Optionally, for consistency, you can escape > as >

To do this automatically in Emacs, if you're in HTML mode, you can select the code that you would like to escape, and run M-x sgml-quote.

Answer 5

As other have noted, you need to escape the xml markup to display it in html.

Take a look at xmlverbatim stylesheet: It does that as well as pretty printing and colorizing.

If you google around there are several stylesheets to do similar formatting.

Answer 6

Do a substitution using a programming language without Emacs.

For Python:

#Make a copy just in case.
#Open file.
#Read lines.
for line in lines:
    line = line.replace("<pre>", "&lt;").replace("</pre>", "&gt;")
#Output to file.
#Enjoy!

Answer 7

• Select the region
• Do M-% < RET < RET !