Re: [xsl] markup of number next to character

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jim,

At 12:09 PM 8/6/01, you wrote:
> I have notes with some missing markup (accented letters added back for
> clarity)
>
> <fn><fnref>1.1-3</fnref> Ou Quando Deus come?ou a criar os c?us e a
> terra 2sendo a terra ..., 3disse Deus: ...</fn>
>
> I to transform to:
> <fn><fnref>1.1-3</fnref> Ou Quando Deus come?ou a criar os c?us e a
> terra <verseNumber>2</verseNumber>sendo a terra ...,
> <verseNumber>3</verseNumber>disse Deus: ...</fn>
>
> Is this problem easily fixed by XSLT?

In a word, no. It is fixed by XSLT, but only with difficulty.

> It is easily fixed with older tools but I am trying to see where the
> limits are to XSLT.

The "older tools" you speak of -- may they be very long-lived! -- are 
probably working with a data model that includes such notions as "string" 
and "character", and almost certainly have at their disposal such 
techniques as regular expressions for string matching. Although XSLT can 
work with strings, it is fairly limited in that regard, having no notion of 
"character" except insofar as that is implicit in strings, string indexing, 
such functions as translate(), and so forth. XSLT processors are happiest 
working with sets of (element, attribute and text) nodes.

Another way of looking at it is that you have to parse your input according 
to a set of rules unique to this data set. XSLT is very strong once the 
parsing of markup has already happened and it has structured data (in its 
own data model) ready to hand. It's not very good for writing parsers.

Regards,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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