[xsl] Ordered union of sequences

[Michael Müller-Hillebrand <mmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello experts,

I tried hard to come up with a good subject, but maybe I failed. I am looking
for pointers and terms that I can use for further research. The task at hand,
which I plan to solve in XSLT2, is the creation of a combined master sequence
of a number of sequences in a way so the internal order of sequence items
(identified by their name) is preserved (and inconsistencies can be
reported).

There is an arbitrary number of sequences, sometimes containing items with the
same name:

(k, o, p, c, f)
(d, e, f, g)
(k, f, z, o)
(a, b, c, d)

I want to create a master sequence which contains every item once, preserving
the original order.

There are many possibilities for inconsistencies (like above the item "o"
appears before and after "f", which should be detected as an inconsistency)
and obviously there is more than one possible solution. Luckily I am only
interested in one solution, e.g.:

(a, b, k, o, p, c, d, e, f, z, g)

The XSLT union operator treats sequences like unordered sets and only solves
the problem of removing duplicates.

BTW, the idea behind this is to create part of an XML Schema from evaluating
document instances.

I am thankful for any pointers,

- Michael M|ller-Hillebrand

--
_______________________________________________________________
Michael M|ller-Hillebrand: Dokumentation Technology
Adobe Certified Expert, FrameMaker
Consulting and Training, FrameScript, XML/XSL, Unicode
Blog [de]: http://cap-studio.de/