This is the mail archive of the xsl-list@mulberrytech.com mailing list .


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

Re: Variable names *as* variables


At 01:44 AM 10/13/2000 +0400, Nikolai Grigoriev wrote:
> > I have a feeling that what I'm trying to do can't be done without
> > extensions, like Saxon's eval. Unfortunately I can't use an extension
> > function for this case, and thought I'd fly it past the list to see if any
> > of you have a brainstorm.
>
>Yet it can be done without any extensions. Try to apply the following 
>stylesheet
>to your <someroot> sample. The key idea is that document('') returns the 
>root of
>the stylesheet itself; in this way, you can address pieces of the 
>stylesheet as
>if they were elements in the source document.

Oooh, this solution is very clever. I don't think I'm going to use it in 
this case, but will definitely add it to the arsenal for further exploration!

>However, I think it isn't a good idea to intersperse style with data. IMO, you
>should better put your location data into a separate XML file, marking 
>them with
>normal markup instead of xsl:variables. Then you can access them using
>document() function, in the same way that I used to extract these data 
>from the
>stylesheet.

I too thought of using such a "driver file." And as a general solution, I 
like it quite a bit. In this case, though, I was attempting to demonstrate 
(possibly to newbies) just the use of variables, and didn't want to cloud 
the waters further by invoking the document() function. Although obviously 
I wasn't above trying to cloud them with a bit of string hacking. :)

Just out of curiosity, in what sense do you consider your proposed solution 
to be "interspersing style with data"? Granted it's something of a hack -- 
providing data in the stylesheet that's not in the source document -- but 
only in the sense that *any* literal result element does so, no?

Thanks very much, Nikolai. (And thanks also to Ken Meltsner, whose solution 
was even sneakier!)

===============================================================
John E. Simpson               | "He asked me if I knew what
http://www.flixml.org         | time it was. I said, 'Yes, but
XML Q&A: http://www.xml.com   | not right now.'" (Steven Wright) 


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]