Re: [xsl] Identifying patterns within texts

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim,

The short answer is that while XSLT 1.0 wasn't designed for this sort 
of work (which we call "upconversion" for various interesting 
reasons), XSLT 2.0 does have facilities that make it possible, at 
least in reasonably well-controlled cases. In particular, have a look 
at the xsl:analyze-string element.

The more complete answer is that how tractable you find your problem 
to be will depend more on your definition of the problem itself than 
on XSLT's native capabilities, and indeed that if you can define the 
problem sufficiently to get a handle on it at all, XSLT is probably, 
at this point, as good a technical means as any available for solving 
it. (Modulo issues of scale, architecture etc.)

So, in your case, one would have to start by defining what you mean 
by "attempt to detect math". What is this "math" of which you speak, 
and how do I know it's there?

Cheers,
Wendell

At 04:24 PM 11/28/2007, you wrote:
> Well I am 4 days into understanding XSLT (and well 4 days into fully
> understanding xml).  I am working on a file conversion utility where it
> would be an xml to xml conversion.  In my research, I came across XSLT
> (along with XSL, XSL-FO,  XSD, DTD, etc).  My question is the following,
> if I have an element with text in it:
>
>                         <item>What is 1/2 in decimal format?</item>
>
> Is there a way using a style sheet to actually manipulate the text such
> that the resulting output would be:
>
>               < question>What is <math>1/2</math> in decimal
> format</item>
>
> Basically, I need to search through the text of an element and attempt
> to detect math?  Most of the tutorials use xml to HTML as an example and
> play with elements and attributes.  I was just wandering if the XSLT
> spec allows for this type of searching/parsing?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim Themis





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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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