Install xmq with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• xmq

Project history

The GitHub repository was created in 2019 and describes XMQ as a converter between XML/HTML and a more human-readable XMQ/HTMQ form, with JSON support, syntax highlighting, pretty printing, a pager, HTML and TeX rendering, and Invisible XML grammar support.

The project documentation and 2025 PDF by Fredrik Ohrstrom frame the design as a response to XML's editing pain: closing tags, significant whitespace, comments, attributes, entities, and transforms are represented in a syntax intended to remain visibly structured and always pretty-printable.

Adoption history

XMQ is a modern niche tool rather than a broad standard. Its public adoption signal is mostly package-manager availability, GitHub activity, and command-line discussion among users who want XML/HTML/JSON inspection to feel more like jq-era terminal work.

The tool's practical appeal grew as it added more than one format conversion. The homepage examples show pretty-printing XML, HTML, and JSON; using an internal pager; deleting nodes with XPath; converting between xmq/xml/htmq/html/json; applying XSLT/XSLQ-style transforms; rendering to HTML or TeX; and parsing arbitrary input with ixml grammars.

How it is used

Typical xmq usage starts as a pretty-printer: run xmq pom.xml, xmq data.json, cat rss.xml | xmq, or pipe a web page through deletion and pager commands to inspect the structure. The same executable can convert back out with commands such as to-xml, to-html, and to-json.

Its more package-nerd use is as a bridge between tree formats and Unix text workflows. XMQ's compact form and clines-style output make it easier to grep, diff, store, or log structured markup while still keeping enough structure to reconstruct the original document.

Why package nerds care

XMQ is interesting because it treats XML not as obsolete, but as a powerful tree model with bad ergonomics. The package gives terminal users a reversible shorthand plus tools around XPath, transforms, paging, and rendering.

It also sits near a family of command-line format shims such as jq, yq, xq, xmlstarlet, and pup, but takes a different route: instead of only querying a source format, it introduces an alternate readable surface syntax for markup.

Timeline

• 2019-09-02: The libxmq/xmq GitHub repository is created.
• 2020s: The tool expands around XML, HTML, JSON, syntax highlighting, paging, conversion, XSLT/XSLQ transforms, and ixml parsing.
• 2025-08-04: The XMQ/HTMQ PDF presents the rationale and compact specification for the syntax.
• 2026: The project is packaged in Homebrew and documented at libxmq.org as a standalone xmq tool plus embeddable C source.

Related projects

• jq is the obvious JSON-side comparison for command-line structured-data inspection.
• xmlstarlet and xq are adjacent XML command-line tools, though they query or transform existing formats rather than introducing XMQ as a reversible syntax.
• Invisible XML is supported by xmq for parsing non-XML input through grammars.
• libxml2 and libxslt are related XML infrastructure used throughout the broader XML tooling ecosystem.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/libxmq/xmq
• https://github.com/libxmq/xmq
• https://libxmq.org/
• https://libxmq.org/xmq.pdf