Re: [xsl] cleaning up ill-structured html

[S Woodside <sbwoodside@xxxxxxxxx>]

Probably best to start over with the HTML and use regular expressions, 
e.g., with Perl. This is not an XSL subject, the html you are starting 
with is not tree-structure so XSL is no help.

simon

On Thursday, January 23, 2003, at 03:54  PM, Ole Sandum wrote:

> I have the task of migrating a number of legacy html
> pages that were authored wihtout regard to proper
> structuring. Body text paragraphs are delimited by any
> combination of <p> (sometimes nested!) and runs of
> <br>. I would like the result to consist of a flat list
> of non-empty <p>'s.
>
> I use JTidy to get into proper XML, but still face the
> challenge of flattening the nested <p>'s and converting
> runs of <br>'s to <p>'s.
>
> Example:
>
>    <p>Some <i>stuff</i>
>    that should be cleaned.<br/>
>    More <b>stuff.</b>
>    <p>
>    Yet more.<br>
>    </p>
>    Stuff.
>    </p>
>
> Should become:
>
>    <p>Some <i>stuff</i> that should be cleaned.</p>
>    <p>More <b>stuff.</b></p>
>    <p>Yet more.</p>
>    <p>Stuff.</p>
>
> I assume it is easiest to do in two steps, first (step
> 1) convert into something like this:
>
>    <break/>
>    Some <i>stuff</i> that should be cleaned.
>    <break/>
>    More <b>stuff.</b>
>    <break/>
>    Yet more.
>    <break/>
>    <break/>
>    Stuff.
>    <break/>
>
> and then (step 2) detecting continuous runs of
> non-<break/> nodes, and wrapping these runs in <p></p>'s.
>
> Do I make sense?
>
> I can do step 1, but step 2 gives me trouble. To
> formalise: how do I convert a structure structure like
>
>     <break/>+ { other+ <break/>+ }*
>
> into
>
>     { <p> other+ </p> }*
>
> I fear the solution is really simple. Any ideas?
>
> Thanks,
> Ole Sandum, osandum@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>
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