Re: Determining if the first child is a para element

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ken,

At 02:41 PM 11/9/00 +0000, I wrote:

> <xsl:if test="child::node()[not(.=normalize-space(.))][1][self::para]">
>    ...
> </xsl:if>

But of course after seeing Mike Kay's nice test in another thread, I 
realized a slightly more elegant and efficient version would be

<xsl:if test="child::node()[normalize-space(.)][1][self::para]">
   ...
</xsl:if>

...which reveals further complications (funny how these things are). We 
have to make sure it's skipped only if it's a whitespace-only _text_ node 
(not, say, an empty element node). So....

<xsl:if test="child::node()[not(self::text()) or 
normalize-space(.)][1][self::para]">
   ...
</xsl:if>

The first predicate evaluates to true if the child node is not a text node 
or if it has a non-whitespace string value. The second chooses the first of 
these. The third checks to see whether it's a para element.

For evident reasons, that <xsl:strip-space .../> at the top level will be 
preferable, if you can use it.

Cheers,
Wendell

======================================================================
Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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