Recognizing Sequences (was More XSL Discussion)

[Jonathan Marsh <jmarsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

| -----Original Message-----
| From: Paul Prescod [mailto:papresco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
| Sent: Thursday, February 26, 1998 7:03 AM| Consider:
| 
| <A><B><A><A><B><A><A><A><B>
| 
| Now I want to wrap sequences of more than one A in a paragraph flow
| object. The problem is that by the time the first A's construction rule
| is triggered, it is essentially too late to make the wrapping paragraph,
| unless you use one of the hacks that have been already suggested (e.g.
| manually trigger the processing of the other A's and surpress their
| output elsewhere).

I just wanted to break this part of the discussion onto its own thread
(since all discussions seem to be occurring on a single thread :-) and to
take a shot at presenting the problem a little more concretely.  I
personally think this is a vital feature.

Scenario 1 (modelled after HTML's <DL>):
<definition-list>
  <term>X</term>
  <definition>1</definition>
  <term>Y</term>
  <definition>2</definition>
</definition-list>

Desired output (HTML):
<TABLE>
  <TR>
    <TD>X</TD>
    <TD>1</TD>
  </TR>
  <TR>
    <TD>X</TD>
    <TD>1</TD>
  </TR>
</TABLE>

In this transformation, a simplistic mapping is possible between
<definition-list> and <TABLE>, <term> and <TD>, and <definition> and <TD>.
There is no simple mapping that results in <TR>.  In an ideal world we would
go back to our source DTD and group each <term>/<definition> pair in an
<item> element.  In the real world, this is not possible.  Specifying an
element sequence that could be mapped into the <TR> is a plausible solution
that the XSL WG should explore.

Scenario 2 (Paul's scenario above):
<farm>
  <cow>Bessy</cow>
  <pig>Porky</pig>
  <pig>Wilbur</pig>
  <pig>Piglet</pig>
</farm>

Desired output (HTML):
<P>cows: Bessy</P>
<P>pigs: Porky Wilbur Piglet</P>

This requires a similar mapping of the "sequence" of <pig> elements into a
single <P>.  This differs from the above example only in that (1) it
contains a sequence of identical element types instead of a pattern of
different element types, (2) the number of elements in the sequence is not
known.

Jonathan Marsh
phone   425.703.4591
jmarsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


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