RE: RE: [xsl] Producing Excel 2000 htm files: how do I manage the hidden stuff

Subject: RE: RE: [xsl] Producing Excel 2000 htm files: how do I manage the hidden stuff
From: cknell@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 12:18:58 -0400
The direct answer is, "Because I didn't think of it." Having now tried it, I can tell you that it strips away all the XML markup from the document, leaving only the element contents.
-- 
Charles Knell
cknell@xxxxxxxxxx - email



-----Original Message-----
From:     Joe Fawcett <joefawcett@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent:     Tue, 02 May 2006 17:12:06 +0100
To:       xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject:  RE: [xsl] Producing Excel 2000 htm files: how do I manage the hidden stuff

Charles

I may have missed something in your post but if you need commented output 
why can't you use the xsl:comment element?

--

Joe


>From: cknell@xxxxxxxxxx
>Reply-To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [xsl] Producing Excel 2000 htm files: how do I manage the hidden 
>stuff
>Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 12:04:47 -0400
>
>I have a task to produce files for Excel 2000 from XML documents returned 
>from a database query.
>
>I started by saving a typical Excel file to a .htm file and began modifying 
>it to produce an XSLT stylesheet. For the most part, this has not been a 
>challenge. For the most part. But now comes the PITA (and that's not greek 
>flatbread).
>
>Round one:
>Excel codes it's html style element by surrounding the content with comment 
>markers (i.e., <--  -->). So my first thought was to enclose the 
>content of the style element within a <xsl:text 
>disable-output-escaping="yes"> element. But all that produced was an empty 
>set of style tags (<style></style>).
>
>Round two:
>I decided to use the shameful <![CDATA[ ]]> markup. Well that produced what 
>I was looking for between the opening and closing <style> tags, and the 
>correct styling appeared in the document when view with MS-Excel.
>
>But wait! There's more! (apologies to all non-U.S. residents who never saw 
>a "Popeil" or "RONCO" ad on television).
>
>Round three:
>Just below the <style> section, and still in the <head> section, Excel 
>places an XML document which gives additional information used when the 
>file is viewed by Excel rather than with a browser. When left in the 
>stylesheet "bare", that is to say without remarking it out in some way, the 
>markup appears in the top, left-most cell of the Excel spreadsheet. Since 
>the point of this exercise was to produce an Excel document that would 
>require no further editing, deleting the cell's contents manually is not an 
>option.
>
>Round four:
>So I tried to cause a set of HTML/XML comment delimitters to appear around 
>this piece of markup, but to no avail. What worked for the <style> contents 
>(enclosing it in !<[CDATA[ ]]>) caused all the angle brackets in the XML 
>markup to appear as escaped characters.
>
>Round five:
>I next tried to place the whole XML document inside an <xsl:text 
>disable-output-escaping="yes"> set of tags, but that caused Saxon's sax 
>parser to object to character markup that was not well-formed.
>
>Round six:
>I next tried to enclose only the comment delimitters in <$[cdata[ ]]> 
>elements. See the paragraph immediately above.
>
>I think I've worn him out punching me. I need just one little trick to 
>knock him out, but I'm out of ideas
>
>Thanks for sticking with me so far. Now you know what I've done and a 
>variety of things that don't work. Any suggestions?
>
>
>
>--
>Charles Knell
>cknell@xxxxxxxxxx - email

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