Re: XSLT's Template Dispatch

On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, David Carlisle wrote:
>    The first case, <when
>    test="//author[generate-id(.)=$id]">, has a path
>    expression returning the node-set consisting of any
>    author element having an identifier equal to the current
>    node's identifier. Therefore, if the current node
>    happens to be an author, the node-set returned will be
>    non-empty, which converts to a true boolean value. 
> 
> isnt this just self::author  ?

Yes. For the *particular* case you mentioned, you could
change the test to "self::author"; this is actually a
pretty snazzy optimization.  However, I was trying
to demonstrate a automated general-case:

To translate any <template match="..." construct having
an XPath expression X, first add a new <when test="..."
clause to the dispatch template.  The path expression for
the when clause is formed formed by appending "[generate-id(.)=$id]" 
to X, and if X is relative prepending "//".  Then move the 
body of the template into the body of the when clause, replacing 
each call to apply-templates with a call to the apply template.

Very sorry that the description was not clear.  The point
of the article is to show how one could re-write template
usage into a more procedural style.  Not that you would
ever want do to this for production purposes; however, it
is instructive to see the equivalence between the two forms.

;) Clark



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