Re: [xsl] paras with nested block-level elements to XHTML mix of <p>s and flattened block-level elements

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Daniel,

At 02:38 PM 8/1/2008, you wrote:
> My question concerns X/HTML as the transformation target, where "p" 
> is the lowest level block-level element, which admits no other 
> block-level element(s) as content, but the source is a model (like 
> DocBook, TEI, etc.) which allows (and has) a variety of block level 
> content in paragraphs.
>
> This doesn't appear to be a new problem... but while I've tried, I 
> just haven't been able to track down any definitive solutions.

It isn't a new problem -- it comes up here from time to time, but 
always in a different guise. Basically you have two options:

* Using a splitting algorithm (easier in 2.0) to split paragraphs 
around content that would be invalid in the result as such, but valid 
as siblings, or,

* Map paragraph elements to HTML div elements (maybe with 
@class='paragraph') instead of to p elements.

Which of these is better depends on a number of factors extraneous to XSLT.

If you want to know more about splitting algorithms, ask again. In 
XSLT 2.0, one case use xsl:for-each-group like this:

<xsl:template match="p">
  <xsl:for-each-group select="node()" group-adjacent="u:block-level(.)">
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="current-grouping-key()">
        <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()"/>
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        <p>
          <xsl:apply-templates select="current-group()"/>
        </p>
      </xsl:otherwise>
  </xsl:for-each-group>
</xsl:template>

... where u:block-level(.) returns a Boolean true or false depending 
on whether its argument has to be split out.

I hope that helps --
Wendell


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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