Re: [xsl] FW: Two-Column XSL question

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Josh,

At 10:09 AM 1/31/2008, you wrote:
> It worked for me, but I need some help understanding what these 
> items are actually doing:
> 1-    <xsl:variable name="others" select="following-sibling::option[position()
> &lt; 2]" />

This is selecting all the 'option' elements on the 
following-sibling:: axis whose position on that axis is less than 2, 
and binding them to the 'others' variable.

It could be written more concisely as "following-sibling::option[1]"; 
the reason you're seeing the "less than 2" logic here is probably 
that the significance of 2 here is that it's the number of columns: 
for three columns, $others should include both the following sibling 
and the next following sibling, i.e. 
"following-sibling::option[position() &lt; 3]". In other words, this 
bit of code was originally written to be more general than your case.

> 2-       <xsl:for-each select=".|$others">

This is selecting the current node "." along with the nodes bound to 
$others (in your case, its following-sibling 'option' element) for 
processing), using the union operator "|". So its saying "for me and 
the node that belong in the same row in the other column" (since for 
you, $others is at most a single node).

> 3-  <xsl:if test="not($others)">

This is fallback logic, for the case where you've run out of nodes 
and $others is empty. (A node set cast to a Boolean returns false if 
the set is empty, so not($others) is true when no nodes are bound to $others.

I hope this helps. Thanks for asking.

Cheers,
Wendell



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Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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