RE: [xsl] Getting all the values between empty elements

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Kyle,

You can associate text nodes with their next-immediately-following tab or 
br, whichever comes first, with a key, as follows:

<xsl:key name="text-by-delim" match="text()" 
use="generate-id((following::tab|following::br)[1])"/>

This may seem bizarre (it is), but it's useful; you can now retrieve all 
the text nodes that "belong" to a tab or a br by using the key function. 
This also has the nice property of retrieving an empty node set for those 
tabs or brs that "own" no text nodes, so you can simplify your conditional 
logic:

<xsl:for-each select="preceding-sibling::ws:tab">
  <xsl:variable name="tab-number" select="position()"/>
  <xsl:if test="$tab-number&gt;$lower-limit and $tab-number&lt;=$upper-limit">
    <fo:table-cell>
      <fo:block>
        <xsl:apply-templates select="key('text-by-delim',generate-id())"/>
        <xsl:if test="not(key('text-by-delim',generate-id()))">
          <xsl:text>&#160;</fo:text>
        </xsl:if>
      </fo:block>
    </fo:table-cell>
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:apply-templates select="key('text-by-delim',generate-id())"/>

Since this key is defined to use the generated id of the first subsequent 
tab or br to grab a text node, to get them all you'll have to make sure 
they key function is called with both tabs and brs as context (that's what 
the final apply-templates is for, to do it for the br).

You might also be able to use this approach (though a different key) to 
associate tabs with brs, thereby avoiding having to do the ingenious 
lower-limit/upper-limit hackery to do the job.

I think it'd be worth your trouble looking into how keys can be used to 
pull nodes like this (you may also have to bone up on generate-id as a 
crucial piece of this puzzle). As Mike hinted, the general problem you have 
posed (getting nodes between two other given nodes) is not an easy one, 
since it runs up straight against the parent-child "containment" 
representation of a document which XSLT is based on (it's only 
"pseudo-containment", if you like).

But techniques like this can help, anyhow.

Enjoy,
Wendell

At 05:09 PM 1/5/2004, you wrote:
> Here's a bit more information (that I am quite sure everyone is sick of
> by now, but I can't quite get to the end of it)...


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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
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Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
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