XML export, while applying XSLT, gives a jumbled mess

Question

From InDesign, I export to XML and apply an XSLT which transforms it into HTML. Trying to edit the document is almost impossible because the whole thing is a few giant lines of code.
What's going on with this behaviour?
Can Dreamweaver view it correctly?

Answer 1

My two cents:
Recently I wrote a script that creates xml structure in a document by performing a number of find-replace GREP operations instead of using map styles to tags or manual tagging.
One of the problems I encountered was the following: if an element contained more than one paragraph, all returns disappeared after exporting to xml file. I solved this by writing an xml-rule that adds <p> tags so a browser displays them as separate paragraphs.
if (gDoc.xmlTags.item("p") != null) {
     gParTag = gDoc.xmlTags.item("p");
else {
     gParTag = gDoc.xmlTags.add("p");
var ruleSet = new Array ( new ProcessParagraphs, new ProcessImageAttributes ); // new ProcessParagraphs, new ProcessImageAttributes
with(gDoc){                    
     var elements = xmlElements;
     __processRuleSet(elements.item(0), ruleSet);
function ProcessParagraphs() {
     gWinText1.text = "Adding paragraph returns";
     gWinText2.text = "";
     var theParagraph, fistCharIndex, fistChar, lastChar, text;
     this.name = "ProcessParagraphs";
     if (gVariant == 3) {
          this.xpath = "/Root/AvisosPublicados/Rubro/Subrubro/Aviso/*";
     else {
          this.xpath = "/Root/Rubro/Aviso/*";
     this.apply = function(theElement, theRuleProcessor) {
          with(theElement) {
                    //$.writeln("#" + gElCounter + " - Element Name = " + theElement.markupTag.name + " - " + theElement.paragraphs.length + " pars");    
                    //gElCounter++;
               if (theElement.paragraphs.length > 1) {
                    for (var i = 0; i < theElement.paragraphs.length; i++) {
                         theParagraph = theElement.paragraphs[i];
                         //$.writeln( "\t" + gCounter + "/" + i + " - " + theElement.markupTag.name + " - " + theParagraph.associatedXMLElements[0].markupTag.name + " - " + theParagraph.contents );
                         if (theParagraph.associatedXMLElements[0].markupTag.name != "Tabla") {
                              fistCharIndex = 0;
                              lastCharIndex  = -2;
                              try {
                                   while (theParagraph.characters[fistCharIndex].contents.constructor.name == "Number" || theParagraph.characters[fistCharIndex].contents.charCodeAt(0) == 65279) {
                                        fistCharIndex++;
                                        while (theParagraph.characters[lastCharIndex].contents.constructor.name == "Number" || theParagraph.characters[lastCharIndex].contents.charCodeAt(0) == 65279) {
                                        lastCharIndex--;
                              catch(err) {
                                   //$.writeln("\tError (fist/lastCharIndex++) = " + err);
                                   continue;
                              //$.writeln("\tfist/last = " + fistCharIndex + "/" + lastCharIndex);
                              fistChar = theParagraph.characters[fistCharIndex];
                              lastChar = theParagraph.characters[lastCharIndex];
                              text = theParagraph.texts.itemByRange( fistChar, lastChar )
                              //$.writeln(gCounter + "/" + i + " - " + theElement.markupTag.name + " - " + text.contents);
                              theElement.xmlElements.add( gParTag, text );
//~                               gCounter++;
     return true;
I also wrote a function that removes undesirable stuff from the resulting xml file, including entities (I don’t know the reason why, but my client asked me to remove them)
function ProcessXmlFile(file) {
     gWinText1.text = "Processing the XML file";
     gWinText2.text = "";
     file.open("r");
     var txt = file.read();
     file.close();
     txt = txt.replace(/&#822(0|1);/g, "\""); // Double left and right quotation marks ==> "
     gWinText2.text = "Double left and right quotation marks";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#821(6|7);/g, "'"); // Single left and right quotation marks ==> '
     gWinText2.text = "Single left and right quotation marks";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#8211;/g, "–"); // En dash ==> – Alt+0150
     gWinText2.text = "En dash";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#8212;/g, "—"); // Em dash ==> — Alt+0151
     gWinText2.text = "Em dash";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#8226;/g, "•"); // Bullet ==> • Alt+0149
     gWinText2.text = "Bullet";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#169;/g, "©"); // Copyright ==> © Alt+0169
     gWinText2.text = "Copyright";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#8230;/g, "…"); // Ellipsis ==> … Alt+0133
     gWinText2.text = "Ellipsis";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#182;/g, "¶"); // Pilcrow (paragraph) ==> ¶ Alt+0182
     gWinText2.text = "Pilcrow";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#174;/g, "®"); // Registered trademark ==> ® Alt+0174
     gWinText2.text = "Registered trademark";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#167;/g, "§"); // Registered trademark  ==> § Alt+0167
     gWinText2.text = "Registered trademark";
     txt = txt.replace(/&#8482;/g, "™"); // Trademark ==> ™ Alt+0153
     gWinText2.text = "Trademark";
     file.open("w");
     file.encoding = "UTF-8";
     file.write(txt);
     file.close();