RE: [xsl] Integrated sort using different elements

Yup, it looks like the ones that don't sort right have empty 
monogr/author. Unfortunately, I have to work with the TEI as 
it is, as tempted as I am to tidy it up...


Two points:

(a) it really stresses the importance of showing us the input XML, rather
than merely describing it. In this case several of us were misled by your
description. Saying that a "field is present/absent" could mean anything,
because "field" has no meaning in XML, but several of us read it as meaning
the element is present/absent, not that the text node is present/absent.

(b) it's easy to adapt the solution. Instead of (A, B, C, D)[1], use
(A[normalize-space()], B[normalize-space()], C[normalize-space()],
D[normalize-space()])[1].

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/


~Quinn

Michael Kay wrote:

When you talk of an element with no monogr/author, do you mean the 
monogr/author element is absent, or do you mean the element

is present

and its value is empty? Being present but empty would

account for the

results you are describing.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Quinn Dombrowski [mailto:qdombrow(_at_)uiuc(_dot_)edu]
Sent: 19 February 2009 17:16
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: Re: [xsl] Integrated sort using different elements

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the tip. A bit earlier, I tried the

<xsl:sort select="
 ( monogr/author, analytic/author, monogr/editor, monogr/title 
)[1]"/>

and it produced some kind of weird results. First it

listed the ones

with analytic/author but no monogr/author. Then the ones with a 
monogr/title, and no author anywhere. Then it alphabetized all the 
ones with monogr/author. (In my smaller test set, there

didn't happen

to be any editors.)

I'm not sure what's happening there, but when I did:
        <xsl:sort select="concat(monogr[1]/author[1],
analytic[1]/author[1], monogr[1]/editor[1], monogr[1]/title[1])"/> 
([1]'s because there's sometimes multiple editions with multiple 
authors)

it sorted everything the way I needed it. I'm not sure if the data 
happens to be such that the concat() problem you mentioned doesn't 
come up, but one way or another it works.

Thanks everyone for your help! This has really been a life saver.

~Quinn


G. Ken Holman wrote:

At 2009-02-19 10:13 -0600, Quinn Dombrowski wrote:

I'm using 2.0 (sorry, I should've mentioned that), so I'll try 
Michael's solution and let you know how it goes...

Before you do so, Quinn .....

At 2009-02-19 10:19 -0500, I wrote:

In XSLT 2.0, choose the first item in a sequence of many items, 
priority indicated by the order of your sequence:

<xsl:sort select="
 ( monogr/author, analytic/author, monogr/editor, monogr/title 
)[1]"/>

At 2009-02-19 15:47 +0000, Michael Kay wrote:

Would it work to sort on the concatenation? -

<xsl:sort select="concat(monogr/author, analytic/author, 
monogr/editor, monogr/title"/>

I think the sequence solution is safer than the

concatenation solution

because if more than one field is present, then the initial

characters

of a following field, tacked on to the final characters of

a preceding

field, will but the record out of order.

Consider the following:

<biblStruct id="b1">
  <monogr>
    <author>abc</author>
    ...
  <analytic>
    <author>xyz</author>
  ...
<biblStruct id="b2">
  <monogr>
    <author>abcdef</author>

Using the sequence approach would put "b1" before "b2" in

the result

because "abc" is before "abcdef", while using the concatenation 
approach would put "b2" before "b1" in the result because

"abcdef" is

before "abcxyz".

I hope this illustrates an important issue that was

neglected in your

decision.

. . . . . . . . . . Ken

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