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xsl:character-map

Declares a character map defined by a unique name. A stylesheet cannot contain two or more character maps with the same name. Character maps are supported by XSLT 2.0 only.

Format 

<xsl:character-map 
  name = qname 
  [use-character-maps = qnames]> 
  [<xsl:output-character> ...] 
</xsl:character-map>

Description

A character map allows a specific character appearing in a text or attribute node in the final result tree to be substituted by a specified string of characters during serialization. The character map that is supplied as a parameter to the serializer is determined from the xsl:character-map elements referenced from the xsl:output declaration for the selected output definition.

Character/string mappings can be defined in the body of the xsl:character-map element using one or more xsl:output-character elements, or they can be defined in an external character map referenced using the optional use-character-maps attribute. If the character map references multiple external character maps, separate each character map's Qname with a space.

An output definition, after recursive expansion of character maps referenced via its use-character-maps attribute, may contain several mappings for the same character. In this situation, the last character mapping takes precedence.

If a character is mapped, it is not subjected to XML or HTML escaping.

Example

This example shows a composite character map - one constructed using both internally defined character mappings (xsl:output-character), and references to externally defined character maps (the use-character-maps attribute): 

<xsl:output name="htmlDoc" use-character-maps="htmlDoc" /> 
  
<xsl:character-map name="htmlDoc" 
  use-character-maps="html-chars doc-entities windows-format" /> 
   
<xsl:character-map name="html-chars" 
  use-character-maps="latin1 ..." /> 
  
<xsl:character-map name="latin1"> 
  <xsl:output-character character="&#160;" string="&amp;nbsp;" /> 
  <xsl:output-character character="&#161;" string="&amp;iexcl;" /> 
  ... 
</xsl:character-map> 
  
<xsl:character-map name="doc-entities"> 
  <xsl:output-character character="&#xE400;" string="&amp;t-and-c;" /> 
  <xsl:output-character character="&#xE401;" string="&amp;chap1;" /> 
  <xsl:output-character character="&#xE402;" string="&amp;chap2;" /> 
  ... 
</xsl:character-map> 
  
<xsl:character-map name="windows-format"> 
  <!-- newlines as CRLF --> 
  <xsl:output-character character="&#xA;" string="&#xD;&#xA;" /> 
  
  <!-- tabs as three spaces --> 
  <xsl:output-character character="&#x9;" string="   " /> 
  
  <!-- images for special characters --> 
  <xsl:output-character character="&#xF001;" 
    string="&lt;img src='special1.gif' /&gt;" /> 
  <xsl:output-character character="&#xF002;" 
    string="&lt;img src='special2.gif' /&gt;" /> 
  ... 
</xsl:character-map>

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