Re: [xsl] special character encoding, two problems

["Jonina Dames jdames@xxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Graydon,

Thanks for replying. I'm actually trying to get just plain ascii 
equivalents for all the accented letters because our customer needs 
plain ascii versions of author names for indexing purposes. Right now, 
the normalize-unicode function is working correctly for most accented 
letters, like an acute e (C), é) transforms into a plain ascii 
"e". Characters like o with a slash (C8, ø) are NOT being converted 
to a plain ascii "o".

Right now, the function I am using is this:

     <xsl:value-of 
select="normalize-unicode(replace(normalize-unicode(.,'NFKD'),'\p{Mn}',''),'NFKC')"/>

What I'm unclear on is why the function is correctly converting 
"&#x00E9;" to "e", but not "&#xf8;" to "o". Is there a way to make this 
function convert all accented latin letters to plain ascii characters? 
We really need coverage for any letter that can appear in a European 
name, so this should also convert the numeric character reference for 
thorn (C>, &#xfe;) to one or more plain ascii characters, to cover 
authors from Iceland.

I ran a broad test of all the accented latin letters most likely to 
occur in author names, and these 28 characters are the only ones that 
were not converted to plain ascii equivalents:

&#xc6;    C
&#xd0;    C
&#xd8;    C
&#xde;    C
&#xdf;    C
&#xe6;    C&
&#xf0;    C0
&#xf8;    C8
&#xfe;    C>
&#x110;    D
&#x111;    D
&#x126;    D&
&#x127;    D'
&#x131;    D1
&#x141;    E

&#x142;    E
&#x14a;    E

&#x14b;    E
&#x152;    E
&#x153;    E
&#x166;    E&
&#x167;    E'
&#x180;    F
&#x197;    F
&#x1b5;    F5
&#x1b6;    F6
&#x1e4;    G$
&#x1e5;    G%

Is there a different set of flags for this function that will yield the 
result I'm looking for? If this function cannot do that, what is the 
best way to convert all of these outlying characters? I need this 
conversion to happen in only one element of my XML, not the entire XML 
document. I can't use translate because it's a one-to-one conversion 
that doesn't cover the ligatures listed above. If normalize-unicode 
cannot be made to cover all the characters listed above, can 
character-maps be applied that act specifically on only one element?

Thanks,
Joni



On 10/24/14 9:11 AM, Eliot Kimber ekimber@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I can't restrain my own pedantry: the correct term is "numeric character
> reference", not "numeric entity": http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#dt-charref
>
> Given that I think I'm the only person who ever uses the term correctly
> and consistently, we probably should have just used "numeric entity" but
> so it goes.
>
> Cheers,
>
> E.
> bbbbb
> Eliot Kimber, Owner
> Contrext, LLC
> http://contrext.com
>
>
>
>
> On 10/23/14, 4:13 PM, "Graydon graydon@xxxxxxxxx"
> <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 08:39:11PM -0000, Jonina Dames jdames@xxxxxxxxx
>> scripsit:
>>> Thanks for the advice! The <xsl:value-of
>>>
>>> select="normalize-unicode(replace(normalize-unicode(.,'NFKD'),'\p{Mn}',''
>>> ),'NFKC')"
>>> /> function works for most of the entities, but it's still missing a
>>> couple dozen characters.
>> Terminology pedant time --
>>
>> &#x00e9; is a numeric entity and exactly the same thing as C) just
>> written differently.
>>
>> &eacute; is a named entity reference (which had better be defined
>> somewhere)
>>
>> Either, as soon as the XML document is parsed, turns into U+00E9 in some
>> internal representation and they're not different from each other or the
>> representation for C) if someone had typed that directly in the utf-8
>> input file.
>>
>> So when you say "entity" here I'm getting the nervous feeling that I
>> don't know what you mean; can you provide some examples?
>>
>>> Some of the author names still have unicode entities instead of plain
>>> ascii (for example, several characters with a stroke, several
>>> ligatures, thorn characters, upper and lowercase). Is there a
>> Well, examples would be good, but thorn, for example, &#x00FE; which is
>> the self-same code point as C>, doesn't involve a modifier; it's one
>> whole letter that doesn't exist inside ASCII.
>>
>> Stripping the modifiers -- which will give you e from C) if you decompose
>> C) first, because then it's e + K
, which you could write &#x0065; +
>> &#x0301; and it would be the same -- doesn't do anything because there
>> is no modifier there, it's just the single code-point for thorn.
>>
>>> variation of this function or a parameter that will catch and convert
>>> ALL of these to plain ascii, as well as the standard acute and cedil
>>> characters? Or do I need to address these outlying characters with
>>> something else (not translate, since I can't use a one-to-one
>>> replacement for ligature entities)?
>> ASCII, strictly, is seven-bit; there are lots of things you can't
>> represent in ASCII.  &#x00e9; *is not* ASCII just because those eight
>> characters all happen to be ASCII characters.
>>
>> So it sounds like you're trying to (either) map U+00FE, C>, to &thorn; or
>> something like that (which is not, I cannot stress too much, ASCII; it
>> might be an ASCII representation of a non-ASCII code-point, but it's
>> still a non-ASCII code-point) or have C> decompose into t+h or something
>> of that ilk.  (Which is at least actually ASCII.)
>>
>> Either way you'd have to use character mappings for those; there aren't
>> any modifiers to remove.
>>
>> Are you really compelled to deliver seven bit ASCII?
>>
>> And, please, some examples.
>>
>> -- Graydon
>>
>>
> 


-- 
Jonina Dames
Customer Support Specialist
Inera Inc.
+1 617 932 1932
eXtyles on Twitter <https://twitter.com/extyles>
jdames@xxxxxxxxx

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