Output of --list-only?

[Benjamin R. Haskell]

Am I overlooking something obvious, or is there really no way to specify 
an output format for '--list-only' or 'rsync -a [SOURCE]'?

Tried '--out-format=%n' and '--log-file-format=%n' (just in case), but 
neither had any effect.  Noticing '-i'/'--itemize-changes' lead to what 
I'm using for now:

rsync --dry-run --out-format=%n -i -a [SOURCE] /nonexistent/path/

But, it strikes me as odd that there's no way to change what the 'man' 
page refers to as 'an output format similar to "ls -l"' when other output 
formats are so readily customized.

In case anyone's curious or another method's better, the goal is to use 
multiple '--exclude-from=FILE' files, but to do something other than 
'rsync' with the list of files that would be generated by 'rsync'.

Best,
Ben