Re: [xsl] normalize-space and sequence

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Abel,

At 06:43 PM 9/26/2007, you wrote:
> David Carlisle wrote:
> >               <entry ie="{$foobar}" name="{para}"
> >               ref="{following-sibling::entry[1]/para}"
> >               usage="{following-sibling::entry[2]/para}"/>
> >
> > and apparently want that to be
> >
> >               <entry ie="{normalize-space($foobar)}" 
> > name="{normalize-space(para)}"
> >               ref="{normalize-space(following-sibling::entry[1]/para)}"
> >               usage="{normalize-space(following-sibling::entry[2]/para)}
> >               "/>
> > If there may be multiple para nodes as children of an entry you'll need
> > string-join as well, if not then not.
>
>
> that will become messy in the end. I'd opt for the pipeline method 
> (not micro-pipeline, am I correct, Wendell? Because we rerun the 
> whole thing again), where with a couple of extra matching templates, 
> you can focus only on the stripping whitespace bits.

:-) Yep, what Abel showed is a pipeline.

You might also be able to micropipeline this -- that is, pipeline 
just the nodes you need to preprocess, at the point where they are 
matched. But micropipelining has a potential weakness, in that when 
you process a variable derived from a process, you have lost the 
context of the original process. Sometimes this doesn't matter, and 
sometimes you can design your micropipeline to account for it -- but 
I haven't looked at this particular problem well enough to see 
whether that's an issue.

Heck: a micropipelining approach would look something like:

<xsl:variable name="name-content">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="para" mode="normalize-space"/>
</xsl:variable>
<xsl:variable name="ref-content">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="following-sibling::entry[1]/para" 
mode="normalize-space"/>
</xsl:variable>
<entry name="{$name-content}" ref="{$ref-content}" etc... />

Note that you'd still have work to do in your "normalize-space" mode 
to make sure your whitespace came out properly (as you might want 
space between the paragraphs as well as trimmed within each 
paragraph). So it may not be better than XPath-based solutions 
(depending on your taste).

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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