Re: [xsl] Selecting First Direct Sibling

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andrew,

At 05:03 AM 8/22/2007, you wrote:
> It all makes sense, and I suppose it must be worthwhile otherwise why bother?

Well like I said earlier, the tradeoff is between the functionality 
on the one hand, and on the other the intelligibility and 
predictability of the simpler treatment without it.

Personally I'm fine with the feature as long as I know it's there, 
but I know others who find it confusing. It's the usual risk of 
having a processor that's smarter than the user. :->

(Of course David just showed that at least till a few minutes ago, I 
didn't know when it's there, which may prove my point about the risk. :-)

> The gotcha case would be something like:
>
> <!DOCTYPE p [
>   <!ELEMENT p    (b|i)*>
>   <!ELEMENT b    (#PCDATA)>
>   <!ELEMENT i    (#PCDATA)>
> ]>
> <p>
>         <b>hello</b> <i>world</i>
> </p>
>
> With the DTD the output is: "helloworld"
>
> Without the DTD the output is "hello world"
>
> DTDs canst both addeth, and taketh awayeth :)

Indeed. Presumably, however, if you meant that whitespace to be taken 
as content, you have a bug in your DTD.

The gotcha I see is when things like count(node()) and especially 
position() return different results when a DTD/schema is or is not in 
play, maybe because the DTD moved or something.

Cheers,
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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