Re: [xsl] number collapsing

[Bruce D'Arcus <bdarcus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Dec 14, 2004, at 8:59 AM, Michael Kay wrote:

> One observation:
>
> >        <xsl:when test="$begin castable as xs:integer">
> >          <xsl:variable name="begin2" select="$begin" as="xs:integer"/>
>
> This may fail if $begin is a string. The string "123" is castable to
> xs:integer, but not assignable to xs:integer.

I'm not following here.  Aren't I saying in the function "if $begin is 
an integer, then apply this logic to determine how to shorten $end; if 
not, then just print $end as is"?

> Better to write the second
> line as
>
> <xsl:variable name="begin" select="xs:integer($begin)" 
> as="xs:integer"/>
>
> to force the cast.

The problem is that I don't know if the page numbers will be integers 
(consider "iii").

> I think your new problem can be tackled using a "group-starting-with". 
> The
> only problem is that this requires nodes rather than atomic values. So 
> we'll
> start by putting the numbers into a temporary tree:
>
> <xsl:function name="f:ranges" as="xs:string">
>   <xsl:param name="pagelist" as="xs:integer*"/>

Note that my issue here was actually applying not to page numbers, but 
to the in-text citation markers.  However, now that I think about it 
more, the same issue could apply to page number.  Does this suggest 
that I ought to have a single generic number collapsing function that 
could be used for both citation markers and for page numbers?

Bruce