Re: [xsl] tricky text and structure test is troubling me

["Liam R. E. Quin liam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2020-03-06 at 16:39 +0000, Trevor Nicholls
trevor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> [...]
> 
> The number of such elements is finite, in fact off the top of my head
> targets and footnotes are the only ones.

Some quick thoughts:

Consider writing a template mode that will remove footnote and target
elements, and will replace an "include" element by its contents (and
process that recursively with apply-templates of course).

(in XSLT 3 it can be a separate stylesheet invoked with fn:transform()
instead of a mode, which makes for easier testing)

So then it's a case of selecting everything before the first section
element - maybe in the template for title:

<xsl:if test="z:has-text(
  following-sibling::*[
    not(
      self::section or preceding-sibling::section
    )
   ] ) />

Now, z:has-text is a function you write that takes a list of elements
(note: if you need to match text nodes as well, it's probably easier to
use the << and >> operators on node()).

It'll pre-process them to remove footnotes etc., and then do something
like,
  <xsl:sequence select="not( empty( $proprocessed-nodes//text() ) )" />
to return true or false.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, https://www.delightfulcomputing.com/
Available for XML/Document/Information Architecture/XSLT/
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