-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Shanks [mailto:contact(_at_)nickshanks(_dot_)com]
What my problem is, is that references like the above are supposed to
be suffixed by a lower case alphabetic character ('a', 'b', etc.) after
the year if there are multiple 'citation' elements with identical
values for 'author' and 'year'. I have no idea how to go about doing
this. Can anyone suggest how to do this?
Hi,
I think you can use xsl:number to achieve this (?)
Also, this XSLT fragment:
<xsl:for-each select="reference">
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"><![CDATA[<a
href="#]]></xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="@cite"/><xsl:text
disable-output-escaping="yes"><![CDATA[">]]></xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="id(@cite)/@author" />
<xsl:if test="id(@cite)/@year != ''"><xsl:text>
</xsl:text><xsl:value-of select="id(@cite)/@year" /></xsl:if>
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"><![CDATA[</a>]]></xsl:text>
<xsl:if test="position() != last()"><xsl:text>, </xsl:text></xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
Is the same as:
<xsl:for-each select="reference">
<a href="{concat('#',@cite)}">
<xsl:value-of select="id(@cite)/@author" />
<xsl:if test="id(@cite)/@year != ''">
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="id(@cite)/@year" />
</xsl:if>
</a>
<xsl:if test="position() != last()">
<xsl:text>, </xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
Remember: with XSLT you're outputting nodes rather than tags --IOW default
output is XML, while text output needs to be explicitly set.
So, generally speaking, you won't need to use <![CDATA[...]]> unless it is
*absolutely* necessary. A combination of CDATA and disable-output-escaping
is hinting that they're both superfluous (i.e. they serve no purpose in this
case but to make your code less readable --Hey, some developers like it that
way, as a form of long-term job-protection ;-)
Another purpose they serve is to trick the XSL processor into thinking that
it is *not* outputting XML while it actually is...
Starting from the above, a possible solution would look like:
<xsl:for-each select="reference">
<a>
<xsl:attribute name="href">
<xsl:value-of select="concat('#',@cite)" />
<xsl:number count="/catalogue/citation[
@author=id(@cite)/@author and
@year=id(@cite)/@year]"
format="a"/>
</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:value-of select="id(@cite)/@author" />
<xsl:if test="id(@cite)/@year != ''">
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select="id(@cite)/@year" />
</xsl:if>
</a>
<xsl:if test="position() != last()">
<xsl:text>, </xsl:text>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
HTH!
Greetz,
Andreas