I think you should be using a pipeline of transformations. The first
transformation should convert your "semantic XML" (BakeDesc, cookie etc)
into regular "document" XML (section/subsection/para etc), and then your
second transformation should be concerned with rendering (including
generation of the TOC). You are running into excess complexity because
you're trying to do everything at once: you need some separation of
concerns.
Regards,
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Friedman
[mailto:michael(_dot_)friedman(_at_)techpubsglobal(_dot_)com]
Sent: 22 October 2009 16:22
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Subject: [xsl] Assistance with position-based Table of Contents (TOC)
Greetings,
I am working on a project where I am trying to generate a
Table of Contents.
Bear with me, I know this has been done before and I've
looked in the archives and not found an example quite like
this. My primary goal is to produce a set of TOC lines that
are indented based on chapter/section/subsection level and to
provide the sequential section number in front of the title
in the TOC. For example:
Goal: 01.02.03 Snickerdoodle Recipes
Where 01=chapter level, 02=section level, and 03=sub-section level.
The irritating factor in this is that my XML is not allowed
to change from it's current state and there are no IDs or
attributes to key off of, AND, the 2nd and third level
elements are not consistent. That is, in the XML, the
structure could be like this:
<chapter chapnum="1">
<title>Cooking with XML</title>
<section>
<title>XML Cookies</title>
<sect1>
<title>Snickerdoodles</title>
</sect1>
</section>
</chapter>
OR it could be:
<chapter chapnum="3"> <!-- chapter level -->
<title>Baking with XPATH</title>
<BakeDesc> <!-- section level -->
<title>Crunching Number Cookies</title>
<cookie> <!-- subsection level -->
<title>Lemon Cookies</title>
</cookie>
</BakeDesc>
</chapter>
Currently, I am doing a full pass through the XML using a
<xsl:for-each> that names each possible iteration of
available elements in the DTD (there are about 40 unique and
sometimes overlapping elements in my project):
<xsl:for-each select="//chapter | //section | //sect1 |
//BakeDesc | //cookie">
Then I determine the level of each matched element:
<xsl:attribute name="level">
<xsl:value-of
select="count(ancestor-or-self::chapter |
ancestor-or-self::section | ancestor-or-self::sect1 |
ancestor-or-self::BakeDesc | ancestor-or-self::cookie">
</xsl:attribute>
...from which I can determine the level away from the root
element, do some calculations and create an indent.
Because the number of elements on which to match are growing
as I move through this 1000+ page document, it occurred to me
it would be better to ignore the actual names of the elements
and create a TOC based on position away from the root. I also
need a way to create the section number based on the position
away from the root element, which I can't seem to currently do.
XPATH is not my strong suit, so I am turning to this forum to
help me with my deficiency. When I try to match <xsl:for-each
select="//*"> against everything, the $level attribute does
not work the way I want it because the result is always "1"
since my context node is the root or chapter element. I can't
get a decent level or position read.
What I'd like to do:
1) Read through the XML <xsl:for-each select="//*"> or
otherwise (without maintaining a huge list of matches)
2) Extrapolate from the current node the
chapter/section/subsection level to
produce: 01.02.03, etc and appropriate indents from a single
node. If it's a chapter node it would only have 01, a section
node 01.02, and subsection would be 01.02.03.
3) Not have to need to know what the elements are.
4) Discover if this is even feasible.
Thanks in advance for your big brains.
Michael Friedman
P.S. XSLT 1.0, Saxon 6.5.5 via Oxygen 11. Sometimes Arbortext 5.
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