today's software development is unimaginable without XML files. configuration data, request content, documentation - everything is packed into XML today, but often these files are not easy to read and nearly impossible to edit with a normal, straight text editor (the only way in which I edit xml's), simply because some generator bot didn't really care about the end user, or developer, who has to cope with it.

to reformat the stuff,

• download XMLStarlet from here.
• unzip the -win32.zip file
• copy the xml.exe somewhere into your PATH, or onto usb stick.

   xml format myinput.xml >myoutput.xml

how to reformat many xml files in one command

using the free swiss file knife, you can reformat many xml files in one go like this:

1. select the files you are interested in. for example:

   sfk list . xml

selects all .xml files from the current directory tree, like:

   apps\JSR172Demo\server\src\config.xml
   apps\JSR172Demo\server\src\jaxrpc-ri.xml
   apps\JSR172Demo\server\src\web.xml

2. extend the command to run xml.exe on each file:

   sfk list . xml +run "xml format $file" -to pretty\$file -yes

example output:

   written: pretty\apps\JSR172Demo\server\src\config.xml
   written: pretty\apps\JSR172Demo\server\src\jaxrpc-ri.xml
   written: pretty\apps\JSR172Demo\server\src\web.xml

in this example, the reformatted contents are written into output files under a directory "pretty".
 
let us view how config.xml was reformatted by:

   dview . config.xml

which simply displays all "config.xml" files in the current directory tree using depeche view:

further reading: how to reformat source code