Re: [xsl] Putting a line feed into XML output (XSLT 2.0)

[Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yves Forkl wrote:
> Using XSLT 2 with Saxon 8.8, I am trying to insert line feeds in the 
> resulting (main) XML document, which happens to be an XSLT stylesheet.
>
> This proved to be not as trivial as I thought it would be, due to the 
> fact that the line feed characters are meant to increase the 
> readability of a complex pattern which makes up the value of an XSLT 
> attribute. (Additionally, the pattern is composed using a for-each 
> loop and is held in a variable.)
>
> My real stylesheet is rather complex, but I managed to derive from it 
> a simplified minimal stylesheet that illustrates the problem I face:
>
> <snip />
>
> Now my question is:
>
> How can I manage to create a real line feed in the given situation, 
> i.e. when the select attribute's value is taken from a variable, whose 
> value results from walking through a sequence of strings?
>
> I know about the separator attribute of xsl:value-of, but 
> unfortunately, at this place I can not do without the xsl:for loop as 
> it also cares for other things in my real stylesheet. For some reason, 
> the variable must be declared before the myxsl:template starts, too. 

That should not stop you from using the separator-attribute of 
xsl:value-of. Just use an extra variable, like this:

<xsl:variable name="children">
   <xsl:variable name="a-and-b" as="xs:string*">
       <xsl:text>a</xsl:text>
       <xsl:for-each select="('b', 'c')">
           <xsl:value-of select="."/>
       </xsl:for-each>
   </xsl:variable>
   <xsl:value-of select="$a-and-b" separator="|&#10;" />
</xsl:variable>


But that won't remove the entities from the result. Use a character-map 
to achieve that (note the changes to your XSLT):

<xsl:stylesheet
   xmlns:xs = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema";
   xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
   xmlns:myxsl="http://www.srz.de/xmlns/yforkl/xslt/TransformAlias";
   exclude-result-prefixes="myxsl"
   version="2.0">
  
   <xsl:namespace-alias stylesheet-prefix="myxsl" result-prefix="xsl"/>
  
   <xsl:output indent="yes" use-character-maps="literal-newlines" />
  
   <xsl:character-map name="literal-newlines">
       <xsl:output-character character="&#xE0E1;" string="&#xA;"/>
   </xsl:character-map>

   <xsl:template match="/">
       <myxsl:stylesheet
           xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";
           version="2.0">
           <xsl:variable name="children">
               <xsl:variable name="a-and-b" as="xs:string*">
                   <xsl:text>a</xsl:text>
                   <xsl:for-each select="('b', 'c')">
                       <xsl:sequence select="."/>
                   </xsl:for-each>
               </xsl:variable>
               <xsl:value-of select="$a-and-b" separator="|&#xE0E1;" />
           </xsl:variable>
           <myxsl:template match="/">
               <myxsl:apply-templates select="{$children}"/>
           </myxsl:template>
       </myxsl:stylesheet>
   </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

This will produce the output the way you requested it.

HTH,

Cheers,
-- Abel Braaksma