[xsl] Transformation problem tei > xhtml

[Daniel O'Donnell <daniel.odonnell@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I have a problem I've been working on but for which I keep hitting a 
wall. It came up on TEI-L, so I think I know the general direction to go 
in, but it wasn't ultimately solved there completely.

The issue involves paragraphs of the following type (1), marked up in 
invalid xhtml (in this example, 1 or more blockquotes can be replaced by 
any other block level element, e.g. table or ol|ul):

<p>Text text text:
  <blockquote>
    <p>Quotation quotation quotation.</p>
  </blockquote>
 More comment on this quotation.
  <blockquote>
     <p>Another long quotation.</p>
  </blockquote>
</p>

In TEI, this might be encoded as follows (2):

<p>Text text text:
  <quote>
    <p>Quotation quotation quotation.</p>
  </quote>
 More comment on this quotation.
  <quote>
     <p>Another long quotation.</p>
  </quote>
</p>

In valid XHTML, however, <p> can't contain the equivalent block level 
elements like <blockquote>, <table>, <list>, so the text would need to 
be encoded (3):

<p>Text text text:</p>
  <blockquote>
    <p>Quotation quotation quotation.</p>
  </blockquote>
 <p>More comment on this quotation.</p>
  <blockquote>
     <p>Another long quotation.</p>
  </blockquote>

The question is, how does one get from the TEI coding (2), where <p> can 
contain 'block level' elements like quote/p, table, and list, to the 
XHTML coding (3), where <p> can't contain block level equivalents 
blockquote/p, table, and ul|ol ?

Ideally as another constraint, the first html:p in a sequence like (1) 
should be distinguished from the rest so that one can recognise the 
beginning of a rhetorical paragraph--perhaps by the addition of a 
section number.

Any suggestions? Rather than rehearse the suggestions from TEI (which I 
can get almost to work, but not quite), I thought I'd ask here to see 
what brilliant ideas might come up.

Thanks in advance.
-dan

--
Daniel Paul O'Donnell, PhD
Associate Professor of English
University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge AB T1K 3M4
Tel. (403) 329-2377
Fax. (403) 382-7191
E-mail <daniel.odonnell@xxxxxxxx>
Home Page <http://people.uleth.ca/~daniel.odonnell/>
The Digital Medievalist Project: <http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/>