[xsl] Re: RE: Extending xsltproc?

[Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev at yahoo dot com>]

"Michael Kay" <michael dot h dot kay at ntlworld dot com> wrote:

> > and I'd also like to be able to present
> > a node-set in a new random order on each call.
> 
> There's no random() function in XSLT, but you can pass a random 
> number into the stylesheet as a parameter and use it to pseudo-
> randomize the output order, e.g. by doing
> 
> <xsl:sort select="translate(generate-id(), "1234567890", string
> ($random))"

Seems an interesting idea, but this will most probably not change the
document order of the nodes in a nodeset, in case generate-id() returns
something like:

"IDAFAYHC"

which is what MSXML3 gives me. What if in the next version they change
the way they calculate the result of generate-id()?

Not to speak that someone could need to have more than one random
(dynamically determined number of) orderings of a node-set during the
same transformation.

Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev.




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