I started thinking about this, and I think I have an approach somewhere
in between the JITT and the BUVH. Its pretty simple, actually, so I am
wondering if there is a reason that this didn't already come up. I
can't really play around with it anymore, but this might be a step...
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/quote">
<xsl:for-each select="verse">
<xsl:call-template name="showverse">
<xsl:with-param name="vcont" select="."></xsl:with-param>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="showverse">
<xsl:param name="vcont"/>
<xsl:call-template name="nextsib">
<xsl:with-param name="csib" select="following::*"/>
</xsl:call-template><hr/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="nextsib">
<xsl:param name="csib"/>
<xsl:value-of select="$csib[1]"/>
<xsl:if test="name($csib[1])!='endVerse'">
<xsl:call-template name="nextsib">
<xsl:with-param name="csib" select="$csib/descendant::*"/>
</xsl:call-template>
<xsl:if test="not($csib/descendant::endVerse)">
<xsl:call-template name="nextsib">
<xsl:with-param name="csib"
select="$csib/following::*"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
One approach is to go "bottom up". This is what Patrick Durusau and
Matthew O'Donnell, who (AFAIK) have done the most work in public with
this problem, call a "bottom-up virtual hierarchy" (BUVH). One pass
flattens *everything* into milestones; the second interpolates the
hierarchy you want. (Actually this is a simplification of what they
did, though I don't see why it wouldn't work.) This is doable, but
quite hairy if you want to preserve any of the original hierarchy, and
so processor intensive that you don't want to be trying it on large
texts. More lately, their efforts have shifted to an approach they
call JITTs ("Just-in-Time Trees"), in which the verse starts and ends
are promoted from atomic milestones into real element starts and ends.
(A pre-XML-parse process then extracts the hierarchy you want.) While
charmingly enunciated, and (I believe) ultimately on the right track,
this approach suffers (IMHO) because it tries to repeal the First Law
of XML Markup: "Thou Shalt be Cleanly Nested", thereby risking
unnecessary Uncertainty and Doubt, if not actually Fear.
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