Re: [xsl] Re: Position() in apply-templates

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Part of Jeni's genius is in her ability to translate between English
and Specificationese, and back again.

One of the big differences (perhaps the single most consequential
difference) between Specificationese and English is that the latter is
much "softer"; the meanings of words and terms will often shift
relative to their context of use. Natural language is always
explaining itself on the fly; whereas Specificationese aims for a kind
of "composability", wherein any statement can be explained entirely by
reference to other specifications.

Consequently, natural language statements are much more prone to
change their meanings when they are moved out of their original
context and into a new context.

The claim  "The xsl:apply-templates itself doesn't change the context
in which something is evaluated" is one such statement. In the context
of the original post and of Jeni's response to it, it should be clear
this describes David's case B, but not case C. In that sentence,
'xsl:apply-templates' refers to an element in the stylesheet, not to
the operation of that element when the stylesheet is applied.

If it isn't perfectly clear now, at least it seems to have been clear
enough back then, because the question was considered by informed
readers to be asked and correctly answered. :-)

Cheers, Wendell



On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 10:10 PM, Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> So, the answer about B) is that its position() is "the number assigned
>> to that node" but from the outer <xsl:apply-templates>  :)
>
>
> What I said applies to the current case, but generally,  the answer
> about B) is that its position() is the position of the (current)
> context node (this might be part of the focus set inside an
> <xsl:for-each> too).
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Dimitre Novatchev
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