RE: [xsl] odf2xhtml: Processing nested element content seperatly ?

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:11 PM 10/27/2006, Mike wrote:
> ... to be fair, he wasn't asking how to solve a
> coding problem, he was asking how to define a mapping between two data
> models, and preferably how to make that mapping reversible. To which the
> only answer I can come up with is: it isn't easy, and it may be impossible.
> (Actually I wrote a PhD thesis many moons ago which said much the same
> thing, though not of those two particular data models, and I said it in
> 100,000 words rather than eight.)

Nonetheless, it bears repeating.

This mapping isn't clean since it crosses between two essentially 
dissimilar semantic domains.

In ODF, as in many document formats, a "paragraph" is defined as a 
fairly flexible construct which, while it is distinct in layout from 
nearby structures (its distinction being indicated by vertical 
whitespace or at least a line indent), nevertheless can contain other 
structures (as David noted) which themselves claim the same 
distinction. Lists, tables and figures can all occur "within" the 
paragraph even while in rendition they all appear at "block level".

HTML 1.0 takes a rather stricter view of it, in which a "p" is the 
lowest level block-level element, which by definition admits none 
other as content.

They are thus incompatible by their respective definitions of what it 
is to be a paragraph. (As David also notes, the more flexible and 
capacious model is closer to what we learned in school to call a "paragraph".)

Unpacking the semantics of "paragraph" in the two cases shows that 
the only possible mapping into HTML is what David suggested, into a 
div, and even then there is arguably some loss, since what was before 
claimed to be a paragraph (a thing properly within the domain of 
rhetoric, not typography) is no longer claimed to be a paragraph.

Despite the fancy circumlocutions it can support, XSLT is mainly a 
tool for renaming or relabelling. In this case, the thing we are 
renaming has to be called "div" in HTML, not "p", since many cases 
are excluded by the HTML rules for "p". Only two sizes being 
available, we have to choose the one that's too large.

Calling it <div class="p"> might help, if you can bear it.

Cheers,
Wendell