[xsl] Retrieving "markup" hidden in comments

Subject: [xsl] Retrieving "markup" hidden in comments
From: AAS Contractor <AAS.Contractor@xxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:38:05 +0100
Hi,

I'm using XSLT 2.0 with Saxon 8B.

My problem is:
I have xml files which contain Arbortext Math markup which has been placed

in comments, e.g.
<!--<FORMULA><F>-21.6&amp;lt;M<INF>V</INF>&amp;lt;-14.9</F></FORMULA>-->
The reason being that the math markup is not valid according to the DTD
being used. I have no control over this. However, I want to be able to
process this "hidden" markup as if it were real elements.

I can retrieve the comment text string, but of course that's all it is - a

string. Is there any way to coerce that into being treated as an element
or document-node? I can achieve the effect I want by writing the content
of each comment out to a file (using a character map or
disable-output-escaping) and read them in again on a second pass. This
works, but is rather messy, and I'd rather do it in one pass.

Is there a way to emulate the effect of document() but on the content of a

variable rather than a file? Other than that, I guess the other option is
to write a parser for the math markup in xslt, which I'd rather not have
to do :-(

Thanks for any suggestions.

Regards,

Bruce

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