Re: [xsl] attribute value templates in elements fetched from a map?

Subject: Re: [xsl] attribute value templates in elements fetched from a map?
From: "Martin Honnen martin.honnen@xxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2020 15:55:31 -0000
Am 03.09.2020 um 16:24 schrieb Graydon graydon@xxxxxxxxx:
On Wed, Sep 02, 2020 at 10:27:17PM -0000, Martin Honnen martin.honnen@xxxxxx
scripsit:
I don't understand where you use xsl:evaluate and where you bind the
value to $calculated.

Let me try to give less ambiguous context!


I've got a few hundred source elements; these group into a small number of
structural categories.  (block, table, inline, link, etc.)  That happens via
map lookup:

<xsl:template match="*[$categoryMap(name()) = 'block']> ...structure markup goes here.... ...something has to define the style... </xsl:template>

That part works.

Inside the structure markup, there's an element that defines the rendering
style.  There are many more rendering styles than there are structures, but
many fewer than input element names; perhaps a hundred.  The rendering style
is usually but not always a simple mapping between the element name and a
style name, and I could -- for at least 80% of the cases -- store that in the
same map as element markup if I went from

map(xs:string,xs:string) to map(xs:string,map(xs:string,item())

So the grouping templates would use

<xsl:template match="*[$categoryMap(name())('groupname') = 'block']>
....
</xsl:template>

and the style would use
<xsl:sequence select="$categoryMap(name())('style')"/>

and retrieve the style markup appropriate to this input element name.

This is attractive because I could keep all the details in the map, making
long term maintenance simpler; the templates and the logic are stable and
behaviour gets driven from the map, making it easy to add new elements or
change a style.

The problem is that it isn't always a static style; sometimes other
information that depends on the input element context is required, such as
title depth. (title depth = "how many of my ancestors have titles?") This
means there's extra/different markup in the style definition and a value that
isn't statically derived from the element name. What I want to do is to store
the style markup in the map in the same way, and populate it with the specific
values somehow after I retrieve it.

So far, - anonymous functions are an awkward and doubtful way to create nested elements in the result tree; might as well just call a regular XSLT function directly and encapsulate the source-element-to-style mapping in that function - evaluate doesn't get me anything because I can xsl:evaluate XPath, but not markup, so this isn't a way to process the elements retrieved from the map to populate values - there isn't any way (that I know of) to say "plunk this block of markup into the evaluation context like we called xsl:call-template and this markup retrieved from the map is what was in the template we called" - there isn't any way (that I know of) to put an attribute value template in the element markup in the map and have it evaluated at retrieval time.

What I want to know is if I'm missing something, and there's a way to get
element markup back out of a map and put it into evaluation context without
having to use transform() and start a whole new process and pass in the whole
input document for context anyway.

I haven't completely understood it but the third point sounds like you
need fn:transform on dynamically constructed or retrieved code. I know
you ruled that out in your initial post but I am not sure there is a
simpler way.

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