Abie,
At 10:15 AM 9/9/2003, you wrote:
Alternatively, there are ways to cheat -- for example, you could write a
transformation that would >output plain text that would "happen to be"
XML -- and that would contain the line breaks you >wanted.
It would, however, be a nightmare to combine this strategy with a regular
every-day transformation, >though I can see it being done as a post-process.
wendell,
this is exactly what I was going to do in case the answer to my original
question was in the negative. I would use <xsl:output method="text"> and
just format the xml by hand, as it were. why do you say it would be a
nightmare? (granted it's not as elegant).
If you kept it in its own box, completely separate from other
transformation logic, it would be fine. The nightmare would be if you tried
to combine this with ordinary transformation logic, which typically would
perform a mapping of source elements to result elements, do grouping,
conditional generated text, etc. Both things happening in a single
stylesheet would be a lot to try to keep under control and a pain to
maintain. Also, writing output to text locks you into a particular
processing model (can't chain the transform as easily, can't use it in
display engines that don't support the 'text' output method, and so forth).
Writing a transform to do such reformatting on arbitrary input, and having
it be the final step of a two- (or multi-) step process, is more thinkable.
Three or four templates would do everything you would need. Is there any
reason you can't do it that way? (Or maybe you're saying that's what you
want to do.)
Cheers,
Wendell
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Wendell Piez
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Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
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