Re: [xsl] How to preserve numerical representation of chars when parsing?

[Thomas Brand <brand at puzzle dot ch>]

At 15:55 05.09.2002 +0100, you wrote:

> > Is there any possibility to let the numerical references pass 
> transparently?
> > If not, what would be a good solution?
>
> No, but if you request an output encoding (eg ascii) that does not
> include the chracters they will be output as numeric references (however
> they were input).
>
> However most of your characters are in ascii range so most likey
> supported most encodings.
> You can always do
> sed -e "s/#/&#035/g"
> to the result of the XSLT.
>
> David
Thanks David,
I guess you already helped me one time.. :)
The problem with post-processing is that one can not make use of the 
powerful navigational possibilities of xslt. The whole processing must take 
place in a flat/ non-hierachical way. I.e. when the refs should only be 
replaced wihtin one element, it gets tricky, although everything is 
possible with sed/regexp etc.

One could ask "Why not just go over to the "real" characters instead of the 
numerical refs?" Numerical refs make sense where text content goes through 
several systems with different char treating. With the numerical ref, it is 
always clear what char it should be.

I suggest to consider a setting/property for XML Parsers that allows to not 
expand numerical refs. Would this make any sense or is this feature too 
exotic to consider?

Greets,
 Thomas



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